











Che Pocket Kipling 


The Naulahka 


Retyua iig 


The Naulahka 
A Story of West and East 


By Rudyard Kipling 


Written in collaboration with 
W olcott Balestier 


GARDEN CITY New YorK 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1913 


4 





Copyricut, 1891, 


By RUDYARD KIPLING anp WALCOTT BALESTIER. 





New Edition, with Rhymed Chapter Headings. 
Coryricut, 1892, 


By MACMILLAN AND CO. 





CopyRiGHt, 1899, 


By RUDYARD KIPLING, 


CON TREN TS. 
PAGE 
CHAPTER I. : ‘ A : : : F Z 1 
~ CHAPTER II. 7 = : . F : ; ; : 9 


e CHAPTER III. . s “ : ; : P : eas 
.-~\ CHAPTER IV... : . : : ; ‘ . . 44 
| CHAPTER V. A : : 2 $ : y hea 


S CHaprer VI. 5 , f 3 Bs : : oer ty 


S CHAPTER VII. . - ; ° ° ‘ ° : - 98 
CHAPTER VIII. . : : . . . ° ° ee WA 
CHAPTER IX. 3 : - ° ‘ . : weld. 
CHAPTER X. . : : : ; ; : : - 140 
CHAPTER XI... ‘ : ‘ . : ° : - 152 
CHAPTER XII. . : ; : : : : : Pye af 
CHAPTER XIII. . : p : ° ° ° : » 197 

CHAPTER XIV. . : ; : ; ° A ‘ « 228 


iv CHAPTER XV. . 2 : ; * > - . 240 


CHAPTER XVI. 


CHAPTER AVI. 
CHAPTER XVIII. 


CHapTeR XIX. . 


CHAPTER XX. 


CHAPTER A XI: 


CONTENTS. 


The Naulahka 





THE NAULAHKA. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 


CHAPTER I. 


There was a strife ’twixt man and maid — 
O that was at the birth o’ time! 

But what befell ’twixt man and maid, 
O that’s beyond the grip 0’ rhyme. 


Twas: ‘* Sweet, I must not bide wi’ you,”’ 
And: ‘‘ Love, I canna bide alone”? ; 
For baith were young, and baith were true, 
And baith were hard as the nether stone.* 
Auchinleck’s Ride. 

NicHoLAs TARVIN sat in the moonlight on the 
unrailed bridge that crossed the irrigating-ditch 
above Topaz, dangling his feet over the stream. 
A brown, sad-eyed little woman sat beside him, 
staring quietly at the moon. She was tanned with 
the tan of the girl who does not mind wind and 
rain and sun, and her eyes were sad with the set- 
tled melancholy of eyes that know big mountains, 
and seas of plain, and care, and life. The women 
of the West shade such eyes under their hands at 
sunset in their cabin doors, scanning those hills or 


B * Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co, a 


o THE NAULAHKA. 


those grassless, treeless plains for the home-coming 
of their men. A hard life is always hardest for 
the woman. 

Kate Sheriff had lived with her face to the west 
and with her smouldering eyes fixed upon the wil- 
derness since she could walk. She had advanced 
into the wilderness with the railroad. Until she 
had gone away to school she had never lived where 
the railroad ran both ways. She had often stayed 
long enough at the end of a section with her family 
to see the first glimmering streaks of the raw dawn 
of civilization, usually helped out by the electric 
light; but in the new and still newer lands to 
which her father’s civil-engineering orders called 
them from year to year there were not even arc 
lamps. There was a saloon under a tent, and there 
was the section-house, where they lived, and where 
her mother had sometimes taken to board the men 
employed by her husband. But it was not these 
influences alone that had produced the young woman 
of twenty-three who sat near Tarvin, and who had 
just told him gently that she liked him, but that 
she had a duty elsewhere. 

This duty, as she conceived it, was, briefly, to 
spend her life in the East in the effort to better the 
condition of the women of India. It had come to 
her as an inspiration and a command two years 


before, toward the end of her second year at the St. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 3 


Louis school where she went to tie up the loose ends 
of the education she had given herself in lonely 
camps. 

Kate’s mission had: been laid on her one April 
afternoon warmed and sunned with the first breath 
of spring. The green trees, the swelling buds, and 
the sunlight outside had tempted her from the 
prospect of a lecture on India by a Hindu woman: 
and it was finally because it was a.school duty not 
to be escaped that she listened to Pundita Ramabai’s 
account of the sad case of her sisters at home. It 
was a heart-breaking story, and the girls, making 
the offerings begged of them in strange accents, 
went from it stilled and awed to the measure of 
their natures, and talked it over in the corridors 
in whispers until a nervous giggle broke the tension, 
and they began chattering again. 

Kate made her way from the hall with the fixed, 
inward-looking eye, the flaming cheek, and air- 
borne limbs of one on whom the mantle of the Spirit 
has descended. She went quickly out into the 
school-garden, away from everybody, and paced the 
flower-bordered walks, exalted, rich, sure, happy. 
She had found herself. The flowers knew it, the 
tender-leaved trees overhead were aware, the shin- 
ing sky had word. Her head was high; she. wanted 
to dance, and, much more, she wanted to cry. A 
pulse in her forehead went beat, beat; the warm 


4 THE NAULAHKA. 


blood sang through her veins; she stopped every 
little while to take a deep draft of the good air. In 
those moments she dedicated herself. 

All her life should take breath from this. hour; 
she vowed it to the service this day revealed to her, 
as once to the prophets— vowed all her strength 
and mind and heart. ‘The angel of the Lord had 
laid a command upon her. She obeyed joyfully. 

And now after. two years spent in fitting herself 
for her calling she returned to Topaz, a capable and 
instructed nurse, on fire for her work in India, to 
find that Tarvin wished her to stay at Topaz and 
marry him. 

“You can call it what you like,” Tarvin told her, 
while she gazed at the moon; “you can call it duty, 
or you can call it woman’s sphere, or you can call 
it, as that meddling missionary called it at church 
to-night, ‘carrying the light to them that sit in 
darkness.’ I’ve no doubt you’ve got a halo to put 
to it; they’ve taught you names enough for things 
in the East. But for me, what I say is, it’s a 
freeze-out.”’ 

“Don’t say that, Nick. It’s a call.” 

“You've got a call to stay at home; and if you 
haven’t heard of it, I’m a committee to notify you,” 
said Tarvin, doggedly. He shied a pebble into the 
irrigating-ditch, and eyed the racing current with 
lowering brows. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 5 


“Dear Nick, how can you bear to urge any one 
who is free to stay at home and shirk after what 
we've heard to-night?” 

“Well, by the holy smoke, some one has got to 
urge girls to stand by the old machine, these days! 
You girls are no good at all under the new regu- 
lations until you desert. It’s the road to honor.” 

“Desert!” gasped Kate. She turned her eyes 
on him. 

“Well, what do you call it? That’s what the 
little girl I used to know on Section 10 of the N. P. 
and Y. would have called it. O Kate dear, put 
yourself back in the old days; remember yourself 
then, remember what we used to be to each other, 
and see if you don’t see it that way. You’ve gota 
father and mother, haven’t you? You can’t say it’s 
the square thing to give them up. And you’ve got 
aman sitting beside you on this bridge who loves 
you for all he’s worth—loves you, you dear old 
thing, for keeps. You used to like him a little bit 
too. Eh?” 

He slid his arm about her as he spoke, and for a 
moment she let it rest there. 

“Does that mean nothing to you either? Don’t 
you seem to see a call here too, Kate?” 

He forced her to turn her face to him, and gazed 
wistfully into her eyes for a moment. They were 
brown, and the moonlight deepened their sober 
depths. 


6 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Do you think you have a claim?” she asked, 
after a moment. 

“T’ll think almost anything to keep you. But 
no; I haven’t any claim — or none at least that you 
are not free to jump. But we all have a claim; 
hang it, the situation has a claim. If you don’t 
stay, you go back on it. That’s what I mean.” 

“You don’t take a serious view of things, Nick,” 
she said, putting down his arm. 

Tarvin didn’t see the connection; but he said 
good-humoredly, “Oh, yes, Ido! There’s no serious 
view of life I won’t take in fun to please you.” 

“You see— gyou’re not in earnest.” 

“There’s one thing I’m in earnest about,” he 
whispered in her ear. 

“Ts there?” She turned away her head. 

“T can’t live without you.” He leaned toward 
her, and added in a lower voice, “Another thing, 
Kate —I won't.” 

Kate compressed her lips. She had her own will. 
They sat on the bridge beating out their difference 
until they heard the kitchen clock in a cabin on the 
other side of the ditch strike eleven. The stream 
.came down out of the mountains that loomed above 
them; they were half a mile from the town. The 
stillness and the loneliness closed on Tarvin with 
a physical grip as Kate got up and said decisively 
that she must go home. He knew she meant that 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 7 


she must go to India, and his own will crumpled 
helplessly for the moment within hers. He asked 
himself whether this was the will by which he earned 
his living, the will which at twenty-eight had made 
him a successful man by Topaz standards, which 
was taking him to the State legislature, and which 
would one day take him much further, unless what 
ceased to be what. He shook himself scornfully; 
but he had to add to himself that after all she was 
only a girl, if he did love her, before he could stride 
to her side, as she turned her back on him, and say, 
“See here, young woman, you’re away off!” 

She did not answer, but walked on. 

“You're not going to throw your life away on 
this Indian scheme,” he pursued. “I won’t have it. 
Your father won’t have it. Your mother will kick 
and scream at it, and I’ll be there to encourage her. 
We have some use for your life, if you haven’t. 
You don’t know the size of your contract. The 
land isn’t fit for rats; it’s the Bad Lands,— yes; 
that’s just what it is, a great big Bad Lands, — 
morally, physically, and agriculturally, Bad Lands. 
It’s no place for white men, let alone white women; 
there’s no climate, no government, no drainage; 
and there’s cholera, heat, and fighting until you 
can’t rest. You'll find it all in the Sunday papers. 
You want to stay right where you are, young 
lady.”’ 


8 THE NAULAHKA. 


She stopped a moment in the road they were fol- 
lowing back to Topaz and glanced at his face in 
the moonlight. He took her hand, and, for all his 
masterfulness, awaited her word with parted lips. 

“You're a good man, Nick, but’’— she drooped 
her eyes —‘“‘I’m going to sail on the 31st for Cal- 
cutta.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 9 


Creag Liha if. 


Beware the man who’s crossed in love, 
For pent-up steam must find its vent ; 
Step back when he is on the move 
And lend him all the continent.* 
The Buck and the Saw. 


To sail from New York the 31st she must leave 
Topaz by the 27th at latest. It was now the 15th. 
Tarvin made the most of the intervening time. 
He called on her at her home every evening, and 
argued it out with her. 

Kate listened with the gentlest willingness to 
be convinced, but with a dread firmness round the 
corners of her mouth, and with a sad wish to be 
good to him, if she could, battling in her eyes with 
a sadder helplessness. 

“I’m called,” she cried. “I’m called. -I can’t 
get away from it. I can’t help listening. I can’t 
help going.” 

And, as she told him, grieving, how the cry of her 
sisters out of that dim misery, that was yet so dis- 
tinct, tugged at her heart, how the useless horror 
and torture of their lives called on her by night 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co, 


10 THE NAULAHKA. 


and by day, Tarvin could not refuse to respect 
the solemnly felt need. that drew her from him. 
He could not help begging her in every accent 
he knew not to harken to it, but the painful 
pull of the cry she heard was not a strange or 
incredible thing to his own generous heart. He 
only urged hotly that there were other cries, and 
that there were other people to attend to this one. 
He, too, had a need, the need for her; and she 
another, if she would stop a moment to listen to it. 
They needed each other; that was the supreme need. 
The women in India could wait; they would go 
over and look them up later, when the Three 
C.’s had come to Topaz, and he had made his pile. 
Meanwhile there was happiness; meanwhile there 
was love. He was ingenious, he was deeply in love, 
he knew what he wanted, and he found the most 
persuasive language for making it seem to be what 
she wanted in disguise. Kate had to strengthen her 
resolution often in the intervals between kis visits. 
She could not say much in reply. She had no such 
eift of communicating herself as Tarvin. Hers was 
the still, deep, voiceless nature that can only feel and 
act. 

She had the kind of pluck and the capacity for 
silent endurance which goes with such natures, or she 
must often have faltered and turned back from the 
resolve which had come upon her in the school- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 11 


garden that spring day, in the two years that fol. 
lowed it. Her parents were the first obstacle. They 
refused outright to allow her to study medicine. 
She had wished to be both physician and nurse, be- 
lieving that in India she would find use for both call- 
ings; but since she could follow only one, she was 
content to enroll herself as a student at a New York 
training-school for nurses, and this her parents suf- 
fered in the bewilderment of finding that they had 
forgotten how to oppose her gently resolute will 
through the lifelong habit of yielding to it. 

Her ideas had made her mother wish, when she 
explained them to her, that she had let her grow 
up wild, as she had once seemed certain to do. She 
was even sorry that the child’s father had at last 
found something to do away from the awful railroad. 
The railroad now ran two ways from Topaz; Kate 
had returned from school to find the track stretching 
a hundred miles to the westward, and her family 
still there. This time the boom had overtaken them 
before they could get away. Her father had bought 
city lots in the acre form and was too rich to move. 
He had given up his calling and had gone into 
politics. 

Sheriff’s love for his daughter was qualified by 
his general flatness ; but it was the clinging affection 
not uncommon with shallow minds, and he had the 
habit of indulgence toward her which is the portion 


12 THE NAULAHKA. 


of an only child. He was accustomed to say that 
“what she did was about right,” he guessed, and 
he was usually content to let it go at that. He was 
anxious now that his riches should do her some 
good, and Kate had not the heart to tell him the 
ways she had found to make them do her good. To 
her mother she confided all her plan; to her father 
she only said that she wished to learn to be a trained 
nurse. Her mother grieved in secret with the grim, 
philosophic, almost cheerful hopelessness of women 
whose lives have taught them always to expect the 
worst. It was a sore trial to Kate to disappoint 
her mother, and it cut her to the heart to know that 
she could not do what both her father and mother 
expected of her. Indefinite as the expectation was, 
—it was simply that she should come home and 
live, and be a young lady, like the rest of the world, 
—she felt its justice and reason, and she did not 
weep the less for them because for herself she be- 
lieved, modestly, that it was ordered otherwise. 

This was her first trouble. The dissonance 
between those holy moments in the garden and 
the hard prose which was to give them reality and 
effect grew deeper as she went on. It was daunt- 
ing, and sometimes it was heart-sickening; but she 
went forward —not always strong, not every mo- 
ment brave, and only a very little wise, but always 
forward. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 13 


The life at the training-school was a cruel dis- 
illusion. She had not expected the path she had 
set before her to bloom with ease; but at the end 
of her first month she could have laughed bitterly 
at the difference between her consecrating dreams 
and the fact. ‘The dreams looked to her vocation; 
the fact took no account of it. She had hoped to 
befriend misery, to bring help and healing to pain 
from the first days of her apprenticeship. What she 
was actually set to do was to scald babies’ milk- 
cans. 

Her further duties in these early days were no 
more nearly related to the functions of a nurse, and 
looking about her among the other girls to see how 
they kept their ideals alight in the midst of work 
so little connected with their future calling, she 
perceived that they got on for the most part by not 
having any. As she advanced, and was trusted first 
with babies themselves, and later with the actual 
work of nursing, she was made to feel how her own 
purpose isolated her. The others were here for 
business. With one or two exceptions they had 
apparently taken up nursing as they might have 
taken up dressmaking. ‘They were here to learn 
how to make twenty dollars a week, and the sense 
of this dispirited her even more than the work she 
was given to do as a preparation for her high call- 
ing. The talk of the Arkansas girl who sat on a 


14 THE NAULAHKA. 


table and swung her legs while she discussed her 
flirtations with the young doctors at the clinics 
seemed in itself sometimes a final discouragement. 
Through all ran the bad food, the scanty sleep, the 
insufficient hours for recreation, the cruelly long 
hours assigned for work, the nervous strain of sup- 
porting the life from the merely physical point of 
view. 

In addition to the work which she shared with 
the others, she was taking regular lessons in Hin- 
dustani, and she was constantly grateful for the 
earlier days which had given her robust health and 
a sound body. Without them she must often have 
broken down; and soon it began to be a duty not 
to break down, because it had become possible to 
help suffering a little. It was this which reconciled 
her finally to the low and sordid conditions under 
which the whole affair of her preparation went on. 

The repulsive aspects of the nursing itself she 
did not mind. On the contrary she found herself 
liking them as she got into the swing of her work; 
and when, at the end of her first year, she was 
placed in charge of a ward at the woman’s hospital, 
under another nurse, she began to feel herself 
drawing in sight of her purpose, and kindled with 
an interest which made even the surgical operations 
seem good to her because they helped, and because 
they allowed her to help a little. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 15 


From this time she went on working strongly and 
efficiently toward her end. Above all she wanted 
to be competent, to be wise and thorough. When 
the time came when those helpless, walled-up women 
should have no knowledge and no comfort to lean 
on but hers, she meant that they should lean on the 
strength of solid intelligence. Her trials were 
many, but it was her consolation in the midst of 
them all that her women loved her, and lived upon 
her comings and goings. Her devotion to her pur- 
pose carried her forward. She was presently in full 
charge, and in that long, bare ward where she 
strengthened so many sufferers for the last part- 
ing, where she lived with death and dealt with it, 
where she went about softly, soothing unspeakable 
pain, learning the note of human anguish, hearing 
no sound but the murmur of suffering or relief, she 
sounded one night the depths of her own nature, 
and received from an inward monitor the confirma- 
tion of her mission. She consecrated herself to it 
afresh with a joy beyond her first joy of discovery. 

And now every night at half-past eight Tarvin’s 
hat hung on the hat-rack in the hallway of her 
home. He removed it gloomily at a little after 
eleven, spending the interval in talking over her 
mission with her persuasively, commandingly, im- 
ploringly, indignantly. His indignation was for 
her plan, but it would sometimes irrepressibly trans- 


16 THE NAULAHKA. 


fer itself to Kate. She was capable not only of 
defending her plan but of defending herself and 
keeping her temper; and as this last was an art 
beyond Nick, these sessions often came to an end 
suddenly, and early in the evening. But the next 
night he would come and sit before her in penitence, 
and with his elbows on his knees, and his head 
supported moodily in his hands, would entreat her 
submissively to have some sense. This never lasted 
long, and evenings of this kind usually ended in 
his trying to pound sense into her by hammering 
his chair-arm with a convinced fist. 

No tenderness could leave Tarvin without the 
need to try to make others believe as he did; but 
it was a good-humored need, and Kate did not 
dislike it. She liked so many things about him 
that often as they sat thus, facing each other, sue 
let her fancy wander where it had wandered in her 
school-girl vacations —in a possible future spent 
by his side. She brought her fancy back again 
sharply. She had other things to think of now; but 
there must always be something between her and 
Tarvin different from her relation to any other man. 
They had lived in the same house on the prairie 
at the end of the section, and had risen to take up 
the same desolate life together morning after morn- 
ing. The sun brought the morning grayly up over 
the sad gray plain, and at night left them alone 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. ahs 


together in the midst of the terrible spaces of silence. 
They broke the ice together in the muddy river near 
the section-house, and Tarvin carried her pail back 
for her. A score of other men lived under the same 
roof, but it was Tarvin who was kind. ‘The others 
ran to do what she asked them to do; Tarvin found 
things to do, and did them while she slept. There 
was plenty to do. Her mother had a family of 
twenty-five, twenty of whom were boarders — the 
men working in one capacity or another directly 
under Sheriff. The hands engaged in the actual 
work of building the railroad lived in huge barracks 
near by, or in temporary cabins or tents. The 
Sheriffs had a house; that is, they hved in a struct- 
ure with projecting eaves, windows that could be 
raised or lowered, and a veranda. But this was the 
sum of their conveniences, and the mother and 
daughter did their work alone, with the assistance 
of two Swedes whose muscles were firm but whose 
cookery was vague. 

Tarvin helped her, and she learned to lean on 
him; she let him help her, and Tarvin loved her for 
it. The bond of work shared, of a mutual depen- 
dence, of isolation, drew them to each other; and 
when Kate left the section-house for school there 
was a tacit understanding between them. The 
essence of such an understanding of course lies in 
the woman’s recognition of it. When she came 

G 


18 THE NAULAHKA. 


back from school for the first holiday, Kate’s manner 
did not deny her obligation, but did not confirm the 
understanding, and Tarvin, restless and insistent 
as he was about other things, did not like to force 
his claim upon her. It wasn’t a claim he could take 
into court. 

This kind of forbearance was well enough while 
he expected to have her always within reach, while 
he imagined for her the ordinary future of an un- 
married girl. But when she said she was going to 
India she changed the case. He was not thinking 
of courtesy or forbearance, or of the propriety of 
waiting to be formally accepted, as he talked to her 
on the bridge, and afterward in the evenings. He 
ached with his need for her, and with the desire to 
keep her. 

But it looked as if she were going — going in 
spite of everything he could say, in spite of his love. 
He had made her believe in that, if it was any 
comfort; and it was real enough to her to hurt her, 
which was a comfort! 

Meanwhile she was costing him much in one way 
and another, and she liked him well enough to have 
a conscience about it. But when she would tell 
him that he must not waste so much time and 
thought on her, he would ask her not to bother her 
little head about him: he saw more in her than he 
did in real estate or politics just then; he knew 
what he was about. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 19 


“T know,” returned Kate. “ But you forget what 
a delicate position you put me in. I don’t want to 
be responsible for your defeat. Your party will say 
I planned it.” 

Tarvin made a positive and unguarded remark 
about his party, to which Kate replied that if he 
didn’t care she must; she couldn’t have it said, after 
the election, that he had neglected his canvass for 
her, and that her father had won his seat in conse- 
quence, Fy 

“Of course,” she added frankly, “I want father 
to go to the State legislature, and I don’t want you 
to go, because if you win the election, he can’t; 
but I don’t want to help prevent you from getting 
Wa 
“Don’t worry about your father getting that seat, 


b) 


young lady,” cried Tarvin. “If that’s all you’ve 
got to lie awake about, you can sleep from now until 
the Three C.’s comes to Topaz. I’m going to Den- 
ver myself this fall, and you'd better make your 
plans to come along. Come! How would it suit 
you to be the speaker’s wife, and live on Capitol 
Hill?” 

Kate liked him well enough to go half credulously 
with him in his customary assumption that the 
difference between his having anything he wanted 
and his not having it was the difference between his 
wanting it and his not wanting it. 


20 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Nick!” she exclaimed, deriding, but doubtful, 
“you won’t be speaker!” 

“Td undertake to be governor, if I thought the 
idea would fetch you. Give me a word of hope, 
and you’ll see what I’d do.” 

“No, no!” she said, shaking her head. “My 
governors are all rajahs, and they live a long way 
from here.” 

“But say, India’s half the size of the United 
States. Which State are you going to?” 

“Which —?” 

“Ward, township, county, section? What’s your 
post-office address ?” 

“Rhatore, in the province of Gokral Seetarun, 
Rajputana, India.” 

“All that!” he repeated despairingly. There 
was a horrible definiteness about it; it almost made 
him believe she was going. He saw her drifting 
hopelessly out of his hfe into a land on the nether 
rim of the world, named out of the Arabian Nights, 
and probably populated out of them. ‘“ Nonsense, 
Kate! You’re not going to try to live in any such 
heathen fairyland. What’s it got to do with Topaz, 
Kate? What’s it got todo with home? You can’t 
do it, I tell you. Let them nurse themselves. 
Leave it to them. Or leave it'to me. I'll go over 
myself, turn some of their pagan jewels into money, 
and organize a nursing corps on a plan that you 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 21 


shall dictate. Then we’ll be married, and I'll take 
you out to look at my work. Ill make a go of 
it. Don’t say they’re poor. That necklace alone 
would fetch money enough to organize an army of 
nurses. If your missionary told the truth in his 
sermon at church the other night, it would pay the 
national debt. Diamonds the size of hens’ eggs, 
yokes of pearls, coils of sapphires the girth of a 
man’s wrist, and emeralds until you can’t rest — 
and they hang all that around the neck of an idol, or 
keep it stored in a temple, and call on decent white 
girls to come out and help nurse them! It’s what 
I call cheek.” 

“As if money could help them! It’s not that. 
There’s no charity or kindness or pity in money, 
Nick; the only real help is to give yourself.” 

“All right. Then give me too. I'll go along,” 
he said, returning to the safer humorous view. 

She laughed, but stopped herself suddenly. “ You 
mustn’t come to India, Nick. You won’t do that. 
You won’t follow me. You sha’n’t.” 

“Well, if I get a place as rajah, I don’t say I 
wouldn’t. ‘There might be a dollar in it.” 

“Nick! They wouldn’t let an American be.a 
rajah.” 

It is strange that men to whom life is a joke find 
comfort in women to whom it is a prayer. 


“They might let him run a rajah, though,” said 


DY THE NAULAHKA. ° 


Tarvin, undisturbed; “and it might be the softer 
snap. Rajahing itself is classed extra-hazardous, I 
think.” 

“ How ?”’ 

“By the accident insurance companies — double 
premium. None of my companies would touch the 
risk. They might take a vizier though,” he added 
meditatively. “They come from that Arabian Nights 
section, don’t they?” 

“Well, you are not to come,” she said definitively. 
“You must keep away. Remember that.” 

Tarvin got up suddenly. “Oh, good night! 
Good night!” he cried. 

He shook himself together impatiently, and waved 
her from him with a parting gesture of rejection and 
cancellation. She followed him into the passage, 
where he was gloomily taking his hat from its 
wonted peg; but he would not even let her help 
him on with his coat. 

No man can successfully conduct a love-affair and 
a political canvass at the same time. It was perhaps 
the perception of this fact that had led Sheriff to 
bend an approving eye on the attentions which his 
opponent in the coming election had lately been 
paying his daughter. Tarvin had always been in- 
terested in Kate, but not so consecutively and 
intensely. Sheriff was stumping the district, and 
was seldom at home, but in his irregular appearances 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 23 


at ‘Topaz he smiled stolidly on his rival’s occupation. 
In looking forward to an easy victory over him in 
the joint debate at Caiion City, however, he had 
perhaps relied too much on the younger man’s ab- 
sorption. Tarvin’s consciousness that he had not 
been playing his party fair had lately chafed against 
his pride of success. ‘The result was irritation, and 
Kate’s prophecies and insinuations were pepper on 
an open wound. 

The Cafion City meeting was set down for the 
night following the conversation just recorded, and 
Tarvin set foot on the shaky dry-goods-box platform 
at the roller skating-rink that night with a raging 
young intention to make it understood that he was 
still here, if he was in love. 

Sheriff had the opening, and Tarvin sat in the 
background dangling a long, restless leg from one 
knee. The patchily illumined huddle of auditors 
below him looked up at a nervous, bony, loose-hung 
man, with a kind, clever, aggressive eye, and a mas- 
- terful chin. His nose was prominent, and he had 
the furrowed forehead and the hair thinned about 
the temples which come to young men in the West. 
The alert, acute glance which went roving about 
the hall, measuring the audience to which he was 
to speak, had the look of sufficiency to the next 
need, whatever it might be, which, perhaps, more 
than anything else, commends men to other men 


24 THE NAULAHKA. 


beyond the Mississippi. He was dressed in the 
short sack-coat which is good enough for most west- 
ern public functions; but he had left at Topaz the 
flannel of every-day wear, and was clad in the white 
linen of civilization. 

He was wondering, as he listened to Sheriff, how 
a father could have the heart to get off false views 
on silver and the tariff to this crowd while his 
daughter was hatching that ghastly business at 
home. ‘The true views were so much mixed up in 
his own mind with Kate, that when he himself rose 
at last to answer Sheriff, he found it hard not to 
ask how the deuce a man expected an intelligent 
mass-meeting to accept the political economy he was 
trying to apply to the government of a State, when 
he couldn’t so much as run his own family? Why 
in the world didn’t he stop his daughter from 
making such a hash of her hfe ?— that was what he 
wanted to know. What were fathers for? He 
reserved these apt remarks, and launched instead 
upon a flood of figures, facts, and arguments. 

Tarvin had precisely the gift by which the stump 
orator coils himself into the heart of the stump 
auditor: he upbraided, he arraigned; he pleaded, 
insisted, denounced; he raised his lean, long arms, 
and called the gods and the statistics and the Repub- 
lican party to witness, and, when he could make 
a point that way, he did not scorn to tell a story. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 25 


“Why,” he would cry defiantly in that colloquial 
shout which the political orator uses for his anec- 
dotes, “that is like a man I used to know back in 


99 


Wisconsin, who—” It wasn’t very much like the 
man in Wisconsin, and Tarvin had never been in 
Wisconsin, and didn’t know the man; but it was 
a good story, and when the crowd howled with 
delight Sheriff gathered himself together a little 
and tried to smile, and that was what Tarvin 
wanted. 

There were dissentient voices, and the jointness 
of the debate was sometimes not confined to the 
platform; but the deep, relishing groans which 
would often follow applause or laughter acted as 
a spur to Tarvin, who had joined the janitor of the 
rink that afternoon in mixing the dusky brew on 
the table before him, and who really did not need 
a spur. Under the inspiration of the mixture in 
the pitcher, the passionate resolve in his heart, and 
the groans and hisses, he melted gradually into an 
ecstasy of conviction which surprised even himself, 
and he began to feel at last that he had his au- 
dience under his hand. Then he gripped them, 
raised them aloft like a conjurer, patted and stroked 
them, dropped them to dreadful depths, snatched 
them back, to show that he could, caught them to 
- his heart, and told them a story. And with that 
audience hugged to his breast he marched victo- 


26 THE NAULAHKA. 


riously up and down upon the prostrate body of the 
Democratic party, chanting its requiem. It,was a 
great time. Everybody rose at the end and said so 
loudly; they stood on benches and shouted it with 
a bellow that shook the building. They tossed 
their caps in the air, and danced on one another, 
and wanted to carry Tarvin around the hall on 
their shoulders. 

But Tarvin, with a choking at the throat, turned 
his back on it all, and, fighting his way blindly 
through the crowd which had gathered on the plat- 
form, reached the dressing-room behind the stage. 
He shut and bolted the door behind him, and flung 
himself into a chair, mopping his forehead. 

“And the man who can do that,” he muttered, 


“can’t make one tiny little bit of a girl marry him.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. of 


CHAPTER III. 


. Who are the rulers of Ind —to whom shall we bow the knee ? 


Make thy peace with the women, and men shall make thee L. G.* 
Maxims of Hafiz. 

IT was an opinion not concealed in Cajion City 
the next morning that Tarvin had wiped up the floor 
with his adversary; and it was at least definitely 
on record, as a result of Tarvin’s speech, that when 
Sheriff rose half-heartedly to make the rejoinder set 
down for him on the program, he had been howled 
back into his seat by a united public opinion. But 
Sheriff met Tarvin at the railway-station where they 
were both to take the train for Topaz with a fair 
imitation of a nod and smile, and certainly showed 
no inclination to avoid him on the journey up. If 
Tarvin had really done Kate’s fathcr the office 
attributed to him by the voice of Cajion City, Sheriff 
did not seem to be greatly disturbed by the fact. 
“But Tarvin reflected that Sheriff had balancing 
grounds of consolation —a reflection which led him 
to make the further one that he had made a fool 
of himself. He had indeed had the satisfaction of 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


28 THE NAULAHKA. 


explaining publicly to the rival candidate which 
was the better man, and had enjoyed the pleasure 
of proving to his constituents that he was still a 
force to be reckoned with, in spite of the mad mis- 
sionary notion which had built a nest in a certain 
young woman’s head. But how did that bring him 
nearer Kate? Had it not rather, so far as her father 
could influence the matter, put him farther away — | 
as far as it had brought his own election near. He 
believed he would be elected now. But to what? 
Even the speakership he had dangled before her — 
did not seem so remote in the light of last night’s 
occurrences. But the only speakership that Tarvin 
cared to be elected to was the speakership of Kate’s 
heart. 

He feared he shouldn’t be chosen to fill that high 
office immediately, and as he glanced at the stumpy, 
sturdy form standing next him on the edge of the 
track, he knew whom he had to thank. She would 
never go to India if she had a man for a father like 
some men he knew. But a smooth, politic, con- 
ciliating, selfish, easy-going rich man — what could 
you expect? Tarvin could have forgiven Sheriff’s 
smoothness if it had been backed by force. But he 
had his opinion of a man who had become rich by 
accident in a town like Topaz. 

Sheriff presented the spectacle, intolerable to 
Tarvin, of a man who had become bewilderingly 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 29 


well-to-do through no fault of his own, and who 
now wandered vaguely about in his good fortune, 
seeking anxiously to avoid giving offence. In his 
politics he carried this far, and he was a treasury 
of delight just at this time to the committees of 
railroad engineers’ balls, Knight Templars’ excur- 
sions, and twilight coteries, and to the organizers 
of church bazaars, theatricals, and oyster suppers, 
who had tickets to sell. He went indiscriminately 
to the oyster suppers and bazaars of all denomina- 
tions in Topaz, and made Kate and her mother go 
with him, and his collection of Baptist dolls, Pres- 
_byterian embroidery, and Roman Catholic  sofa- 
pillows and spatter-work filled his parlor at home. 

But his universal good nature was not so popular 
as it deserved to be. ‘The twilight coteries took his 
money but kept their opinion of him; and Tarvin, 
as the opposing candidate, had shown what he 
thought of his rival’s system of politics by openly 
declining to buy a single ticket. This feeble-foolish 
wish to please everybody was, he understood very 
well, at the root of Sheriff’s attitude toward his 
‘daughter’s mania. Kitty wanted to go so bad he 
supposed he’d better let her was his slouching ver- 
sion of the situation at home. He declared that he 
had opposed the idea strongly when she had first 
suggested it, and Tarvin did not doubt that Sheriff, 
who he knew was fond of her, had really done what 


30 THE NAULAHKA. 


he could. His complaint against him was not on 
the score of disposition but of capacity. He recog- 
nized, however, that this was finally a complaint, 
like all his others, against Kate; for it was Kate’s 
will which made all pleadings vain. 

When the train for Topaz arrived at the station, 
Sheriff and Tarvin got into the drawing-room car 
together. Tarvin did not yearn to talk to Sheriff 
on the way to Topaz, but neither did he wish to 
seem to shirk conversation. Sheriff offered him a 
cigar in the smoking-room of the Pullman, and 
when Dave Lewis, the conductor, came through, 
Tarvin hailed him as an old friend, and made him 
come back and join them when he had gone his 
rounds. Tarvin liked Lewis in the way that he 
liked the thousand other casual acquaintances in the 
State with whom he was popular, and his invitation 
was not altogether a device for avoiding private talk 
with Sheriff. The conductor told them that he had 
the president of the Three C.’s on behind in a 
special car, with his party. 

“ No!” exclaimed Tarvin, and begged him to in- 
troduce him on the spot; he was precisely the man 
he wanted to see. ‘The conductor laughed, and said 
he wasn’t a director of the road —not himself; but 
when he had left them to go about his duties he 
came back, after a time, to say that the president had 
been asking whom he could recommend at Topaz 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 31 


as a fair-minded and public-spirited man, able to 
discuss in a reasonable spirit the question of the 
Three C.’s coming to Topaz. The conductor told 
him that he had two such gentlemen on board his 
train at that moment, and the president sent word 
to them by him that he would be glad to have a little 
talk with them if they would come back to his ear. 

For a year the directorate of the Three C.’s had 
been talking of running their line through Topaz, 
in the dispassionate and impartial manner of direc- 
torates which await encouragement. The board of 
trade at Topaz had promptly met and voted the 
encouragement. It took the shape of town bonds 
and gifts of land, and finally of an undertaking to 
purchase shares of stock in the road itself, at an 
inflated price. This was handsome even for a board 
of trade, but under the prick of town ambition and 
town pride Rustler had done better. Rustler lay 
fifteen miles from Topaz, up in the mountains, and 
by, that much nearer the mines; and Topaz recog- 
nized it as its rival in other matters than that of the 
Three C.’s. 

The two towns had enjoyed their boom at about 
the same time; then the boom had left Rustler and 
had betaken itself to Topaz. This had cost Rustler 
a number of citizens, who moved to the more pros- 
perous place. Some of the citizens took their houses 
up bodily, loaded them on a flat car, and sent them 


ee THE NAULAHKA. 


over to Topaz as freight, to the desolation of the 
remaining inhabitants of Rustler. But Topaz now 
began in her turn to feel that she was losing her 
clutch. A house or two had been moved back. It 
was Rustler this time which was gaining. If the 
railroad went there, Topaz was lost. If Topaz 
secured the railroad, the town was made. The two 
towns hated each other as such towns hate in the 
West — malignantly, viciously, joyously. If a con- 
vulsion of nature had obliterated one town, the other 
must have died from sheer lack of interest in life. 
If Topaz could have killed Rustler, or if Rustler 
could have killed Topaz, by more enterprise, push, 
and go, or by the lightnings of the local press, the 
surviving town would have organized a triumphal 
procession and a dance of victory. But the destruc- 
tion of the other town by any other than the heaven- 
appointed means of schemes, rustle, and a board of 
trade would have been a poignant grief to the sur- 
vivor. 

The most precious possession of a citizen of the 
West is his town pride. It is the flower of that 
pride to hate the rival town. ‘Town pride cannot 
exist without town jealousy, and it was therefore 
fortunate that Topaz and Rustler lay within conven- 
ient hating distance of each other, for this living 
belief of men in the one spot of all the great western 
wilderness on which they have chosen to pitch their 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. a5 


tents contains within itself the future and, the 
promise of the West. 

Tarvin cherished this sentiment as a religion. It 
was nearer to him than anything in the world but 
Kate, and sometimes it was even nearer than Kate. 
It did duty with him for all the higher aspirations 
and ideals which beckon other men. He wished to 
succeed, he wished to make a figure, but his best 
wish for himself was one with his best wish for the 
town. He could not succeed if the town failed; and 
if the town prospered he must prosper. His ambi- 
tion for Topaz, his glory in Topaz, were a patriotism 
— passionate and personal. ‘Topaz was his country; 
and because it was near and real, because he could 
put his hand on it, and, above all, because he could 
buy and sell pieces of it, it was much more recog- 
nizably his country than the United States of 
America, which was his country in time of war. 

He had been present at the birth of Topaz. He 
had known it when his arms could almost encircle 
it; he had watched and fondled and caressed it; he 
had pegged down his heart with the first peg of the 
survey; and now he knew what was good for it. 
It wanted the Three C.’s. | 

The conductor presented Tarvin and Sheriff to 
the president when he had led them back to his 
private car, and the president made them both 
known to his young wife, —a blonde of twenty-five, 


D 


34 THE NAULAHKA. 


consciously pretty and conspicuously bridal, — by 
whose side Tarvin placed himself with his instant 
perception. There were apartments in the private 
car before and beyond the drawing-room into which 
they had been shown. ‘The whole was a miracle of 
compactness and convenience; the decoration was 
of a spacious refinement. In the drawing-room was 
a smother of plushes in hues of no kindred, a flicker 
of tortured nickel-work, and a flash of mirrors. The 
studied soberness of the wood-work, in a more 
modern taste, heightened the high pitch of the rest. 
The president of the embryo Colorado and Cali- 
fornia Central made room for Sheriff in one of the 
movable wicker chairs by tilting out a heap of illus- 
trated papers, and bent two beady black eyes on him 
from under a pair of bushy eyebrows. His own bulk 
filled and overflowed another of the frail chairs. He 
had the mottled cheeks and the flaccid fullness of 
chin of a man of fifty who has lived too well. He 
listened to the animated representations which 
Sheriff at once began making him with an irre- 
sponsive, sullen face, while Tarvin engaged Mrs. 
Mutrie in a conversation which did not imply the 
existence of railways. He knew all about the mar- 
riage of the president of the Three C.’s, and he found 
her very willing to let him use his knowledge flat- 
teringly. He made her his compliments: he _ be- 


guiled her into telling him about her wedding 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 85 


journey. They were just at the end of it; they were 
to settle in Denver. She wondered how she should 
like it. ‘Tarvin told her how she would like it. He 
guaranteed Denver; he gilded and graced it for her; 
he made it the city of a dream, and peopled it out 
of an Eastern fairy tale. Then he praised the stores 
and the theatres. He said they beat New York, but 
she ought to see their theatre at Topaz. He hoped 
they meant to stay over a day or two at Topaz. 
Tarvin would not praise Topaz crudely, as he 
praised Denver. He contrived to intimate its 
unique charm, and when he had managed to make 
her see it in fancy as the prettiest, and finest, and 
most prosperous town in the West, he left the sub-: 
ject. But most of their subjects were more personal, 
and while he discussed them with her he pushed out 
experimentally in one direction and another, first for 
a chord of sympathy, then for her weak point. He 
wanted to know how she could be reached. That 
was the way to reach the president. He had per- 
ceived it as soon as he entered the car. He knew 
her history, and had even known her father, who 
had once kept the hotel where he stayed when he 
went to Omaha. He asked her about the old house, 
and the changes of proprietorship since he had been 
there. Who had it now? He hoped they had kept 
the head waiter. And the cook? It made his 
mouth water to think of that cook. She laughed 


36 THE NAULAHKA. 


with instant sociability. Her childhood had been 
passed about the hotel. She had played in the halls 
and corridors, drummed on the parlor piano, and 
consumed candy in the office. She knew that cook 
—knew him personally. He had given her custards 
to take to bed with her. Oh, yes, he was still there. 

There was an infectious quality in Tarvin’s open 
and friendly manner, in his willingness to be 
amused, and in his lively willingness to contribute 
to the current stock of amusement, and there was 
something endearing in his hearty, manly way, his 
_ confident, joyous air, his manner of taking life 
strongly, and richly, and happily. He had an im- 
partial kindness for the human species. He was 
own cousin to the race, and own brother to the 
members of it he knew, when they would let him 
be. 

He and Mrs. Mutrie were shortly on beautiful 
terms, and she made him come back with her to 
the bow-window at the end of the car, and point 
out the show sights of the Grand Cajion of the 
Arkansas to her. Theirs was the rearmost carriage, 
and they looked back through the polished sweep 
of glass in which the president’s car terminated,. 
at the twisting streak of the receding track, and 
the awful walls of towering rock between which 
it found its way. They stooped to the floor to catch 
sight of the massy heights that hung above them, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. oT 


and peered back at the soaring chaos of rock which, 
having opened to let them through, closed again 
immitigably as they left it behind. The train went 
racketing profanely through the tumbled beauty 
of this primeval world, miraculously keeping a 
foothold on the knife-edge of space won for it at 
the bottom of the cafion from the river on one side 
and from the rock on the other. Mrs. Mutrie would 
sometimes lose her balance as the train swept them 
around the ceaseless curves, and only saved herself 
by snatching at Tarvin. It ended in his making 
her take his arm, and then they stood and rocked 
together with the motion of the train, Tarvin 
steadying their position with outstretched legs, 
while they gazed up at the monster spires and 
sovereign hills of stone wavering and dizzying over 
their heads. 

Mrs. Mutrie gave frequent utterance to little 
exclamations of wonder and applause, which began 
by being the appropriate feminine response to great 
expressions of nature, and ended in an awed mur- 
mur. Her light nature was controlled and subdued 
by the spectacle as it might have been silenced 
by the presence of death; she used her little arts 
and coquetries on Tarvin mechanically and _half- 
heartedly until they were finally out of the caiion, 
when she gave a gasp of relief, and, taking petulant 
possession of him, made him return with her to 


38 THE NAULAHKA. 


the chairs they had left in the drawing-room. 
Sheriff was still pouring the story of the advantages 
of Topaz into the unattending ear of the president, 
whose eyes were on the window-pane. Mutrie 
received her pat on the back and her whispered 
confidence with the air of an embarrassed ogre. 
She flounced into her former seat, and commanded 
Tarvin to amuse her; and Tarvin willingly told 
her of a prospecting expedition he had once made 
into the country above the cafion. He hadn’t found 
what he was looking for, which was silver, but he 
had found some rather uncommon amethysts. 

“Oh, you don’t mean it! You delightful man! 
Amethysts! Real live ones? I didn’t know they 
found amethysts in Colorado.” 

A singular light kindled in her eyes, a light of 
passion and longing. ‘Tarvin fastened on the look 
instantly. Was that her weak point? If it was— 
He was full of learning about precious stones. 
Were they not part of the natural resources of the 
country about Topaz? He could talk precious 
stones with her until the cows came home. But 
would that bring the Three C.’s to Topaz? A wild 
notion of working complimentary bridal resolutions 
and an appropriation for a diamond tiara through 
the board of trade danced through his head, and 
was dismissed. No public offerings of that kind 


would help Topaz. This was a case for private 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 39 


diplomacy, for subtle and laborious delicacies, for 
quiet and friendly manipulation, for the tact of 
finger-tips, —a touch here, a touch there, and then 
a grip, —a case, in fine, for Nicholas Tarvin, and 
for no one else on top of earth. He saw himself 
bringing the Three C.’s splendidly, royally, unex- 
pectedly into Topaz, and fixing it there by that 
same Tarvin’s unaided strength; he saw himself 
the founder of the future of the town he loved. 
He saw Rustler in the dust, and the owner of a 
certain twenty-acre plot a millionaire. 

His fancy dwelt affectionately for a moment on 
the twenty-acre plot; the money with which he 
had bought it had not come easily, and business 
in the last analysis was always business. But the 
plot, and his plan of selling a portion of it to the 
Three C.’s for a round-house, when the railway 
came, and disposing of the rest as town lots by the 
front foot, were minor chords in the larger harmony. 
His dream was of Topaz. If promoters, in accord 
with the high plan of providence, usually came in 
on the ground floor when their plans went right, 
that was a fact strictly by the way. 

He noticed now, as he glanced at Mrs. Mutrie’s 
hands, that she wore unusual rings. They were 
not numerous, but the stones were superb. He 
ventured to admire the huge solitaire she wore 
on her left hand, and, as they fell into a talk about 


40 THE NAULAHKA. 


jewels, she drew it off to let him see it. She said 
the diamond had a history. Her father had bought 
it from an actor, a tragedian who had met bad 
business at Omaha, after playing to empty houses 
at Denver, Topeka, Kansas City, and St. Jo. The 
money had paid the fares of the company home to 
New York, a fact which connected the stone with 
the only real good it had ever done its various 
owners. The tragedian had won it from a gambler 
who. had killed his man in a quarrel over it; the 
man who had died for it had bought it at a low 
price from the absconding clerk of a diamond 
merchant. 

“It ought to have been smuggled out of the 
mines by the man who found it at Kimberly, or 
somewhere, and sold to an I. D. B.,” she said, 
“to make the story complete. Don’t you think so, 
Mroviarvin ten 

She asked all her questions with an arch of the 
eyebrow, and an engaging smile which required 
the affirmative readily furnished by Tarvin. He 
would have assented to an hypothesis denying virtue 
to the discoveries of Galileo and Newton if Mrs. 
Mutrie had broached it just then. He sat tense 
and rigid, full of his notion, watching, waiting, 
like a dog on the scent. 

“T look into it sometimes to see if I can’t find 


> 


a picture of the crimes it has seen,” she said. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 41 


“They’re so nice and shivery, don’t you think so, 
Mr. Tarvin, particularly the murder? But what I 
like best about it is the stone itself. It 7s a beauty, 
isn’t it? Pa used to say it was the handsomest 
he’d ever seen, and in a hotel you see lots of good 
diamonds, you know.” She gazed a moment aftec- 
tionately into the liquid depths of the brilliant. 
“Oh, there’s nothing like a beautiful stone — noth- 
ing!” she breathed. Her eyes kindled. He heard 
for the first time in her voice the ring of absolute 
sincerity and unconsciousness. “I could look at 
a perfect jewel forever, and I don’t much care what 
it is, so it 7s perfect. Pa used to know how I 
loved stones, and he was always trading them with 
the people who came to the house. Drummers are 
great fellows for jewelry, you know, but they don’t 
always know a good stone from a bad one. Pa 


? 


used to make some good trades,” she said, pursing 
her pretty lips meditatively; “but he would never 
take anything but the best, and then he would 
trade that, if he could, for something better. He 
would always give two or three stones with the 
least flaw in them for one real good one. He 
knew they were the only ones I cared for. Oh, 
I do love them! They’re better than folks. They’re 
always there, and always just so beautiful.” 

“JT think I know a necklace you’d like, if you 


care for such things,” said Tarvin, quietly. 


42 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Do you?” she beamed. “Oh, where?” 

“A long way from here.” 

“Oh — Tiffany’s/” she exclaimed scornfully. “I 
know you!” she added, with resumed art of into- 
nation. 

“No; further.” 

“Where?” 

“India.” 

She stared at him a moment interestedly. “Tell - 
me what it’s like,” she said. Her whole attitude 
and accent were changed again. ‘There was plainly 
one subject on which she could be serious.. “Is it 
really good?” 

“It’s the best,” said Tarvin, and stopped. 

“Well!” she exclaimed. “Don’t tantalize me. 
What is it made of?” . 

“Oh, diamonds, pearls, rubies, opals, turquoises, 
amethysts, sapphires —a rope of them. The rubies 
are as big as your fist; the diamonds are the size 
of hens’ eggs. It’s worth a king’s ransom.” 

She caught her breath. Then after a long 
moment, “Oh!” she sighed; and then, “Oh!” she 
murmured again, languorously, wonderingly, long- 
ingly. ‘“ And where is it?” she asked briskly, of 
a sudden. 

“Round the neck of an idol in the province of 
Rajputana. Do you want it?” he asked grimly. 

She laughed. “Yes,” she answered 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 43 


“Tll get it for you,” said Tarvin, simply. 

“ Yes, you will!” pouted she. 

“IT will,” repeated Tarvin. 

She threw back her gay blonde head and laughed 
to the painted Cupids on the ceiling of the car. She 
always threw back her head when she laughed; it 
showed her throat. 


called its “natural resources.” 


THE NAULAHKA, 


CHAPTER IV. 


Your patience, Sirs; the Devil took me up 

To the burned mountain over Sicily 

(Fit place for me), and there I saw my Earth — 
(Not all Earth’s splendor, ’twas beyond my need) 
And that one spot I love, — all Earth to me 

And her I love, my Heaven. What said I ? 

My Love was safe from all the powers of Hell — 
For you, e’en you, acquit her of my guilt — 

But Sula, nestling by our sail-specked sea, 

My city, child of mine, my heart, my home, 
Mine and my pride — evil might visit there ! 

It was for Sula and her naked ports, 

Prey to the galleys of the Algerine, 

Our city Sula, that I drove my price — 

For love of Sula and for love of her. 

The twain were woven, gold on sackcloth, twined 
Past any sundering — till God shall judge 

The evil and the good.* 


The Grand-Master’s Defence. 


THE president engaged rooms at the hotel beside 
the railroad track at Topaz, and stayed over the 
next day. ‘Tarvin and Sheriff took possession of 
him, and showed him the town and what they 


president to hold rein when he had ridden with 
him to a point outside the town, and discoursed, - 
in the midst of the open plain and in the face of 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


Tarvin caused the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. ie 


the snow-capped mountains, on the reasonableness 
and necessity of making Topaz the end of a division 
for the new railroad, and putting the division 
superintendent, the workshops, and the roundhouse 
here. 

Tn his heart he knew the president to be absolutely 
opposed to bringing the railroad to Topaz at all; 
but he preferred to assume the minor point. It 
was much easier, as a matter of fact, to show that 
Topaz ought to be made a junction, and the end 
of a division, than it was to show that it ought to 
be a station on the Three C.’s. If it was any- 
thing, it would have to be a junction; the difficulty | 
was to prove that it ought to be anything. 

Tarvin knew the whole Topaz situation forward 
and back, as he might have known the multiph- 
cation table. He was not president of the board 
of trade and the head of a land and improvement 
company, organized with a capital of a million on 
a cash basis of $2000, for nothing. ‘Tarvin’s 
company included all the solid men of the town; 
it owned the open plain from Topaz to the foothills, 
and had laid it out in streets, avenues, and public 
parks. One could see the whole thing on a map 
hung in the company’s office on Connecticut 
Avenue, which was furnished in oak, floored with 
mosaic, carpeted with Turkish rugs, and draped 
with silk. There one could buy town lots at any 


46 THE NAULAHKA. 


point within two miles of the town; there, in fact, 
Tarvin had some town lots to sell. The habit of 
having them to sell had taught him the worst and 
the best that could be said about the place; and he 
knew to an exactitude all that he could make a 
given man believe about it. 

He was aware, for example, that Rustler not 
only had richer mines in its near neighborhood than 
Topaz, but that it tapped a mining country behind 
it of unexplored and fabulous wealth; and he knew 
that the president knew it. He was equally familiar 
with other facts —as, for example, that the mines 
about Topaz were fairly good, though nothing 
remarkable in a region of great mineral wealth; 
and that, although the town lay in a wide and 
well-irrigated valley, and in the midst of an excel- 
lent cattle country, these were limited advantages, 
and easily matched elsewhere. In other words, 
the natural resources of Topaz constituted no such 
claim for it as a “great railroad centre” as he 
would have liked any one to suppose who heard 
him talk. 

But he was not talking to himself. His private 
word to himself was that Topaz was created to be 
a railroad town, and the way to create it was to 
make it a railroad town. This proposition, which 
could not have been squared to any system of logic, 
proceeded on the soundest system of reasoning — 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 47 


as thus: Topaz was not an existence at all; Topaz 
was a hope. Very well. And when one wished 
to make such hopes realities in the West, what 
did one do? Why, get some one else to believe 
in them, of course. ‘Topaz was valueless without 
the Three C.’s. Then what was its value to the 
Three C.’s? Obviously the value that the Three 
C.’s would give it. 

Tarvin’s pledge to the president amounted to 
this, that if he would give them a chance, they 
would be worthy of it; and he contended that, in 
essence, that was all that any town could say. The 
point for the president to judge was, which place 
would be most lhkely to be worthy of such an 
opportunity, Topaz or Rustler; and he claimed 
there could be no question about that. When you 
came to size it up, he said, it was the character of 
the inhabitants that counted. They were dead at 
Rustler — dead and buried. Everybody knew that; 
there was no trade, no industry, no life, no energy, 
no money there. And look at Topaz! The presi- 
dent could see the character of her citizens at a 
glance as he walked the streets. They were wide 
awake down here. They meant business. They 
believed in their town, and they were ready to 
put their money on her. The president had only 
to say what he expected of them. And then he 
broached to him his plan for getting one of the 


48 THE NAULAHKA. 


Denver smelters to establish a huge branch at 
Topaz; he said that he had an agreement with one 
of them in his pocket, conditioned solely on the 
Three C.’s--coming their way. The company 
couldn’t make any such arrangement with Rustler; 
he knew that. Rustler hadn’t the flux, for one 
thing. The smelter people had come up from 
Denver at the expense of Topaz, and had proved 
Topaz’s allegation that Rustler couldn’t find a 
proper flux for smelting its ore nearer to her own 
borders than fifteen miles—in other words, she 
couldn’t find it this side of Topaz. 

Tarvin went on to say that what Topaz wanted 
was an outlet for her products to the Gulf of 
Mexico, and the Three C.’s was the road to furnish 
it. The president had, perhaps, listened to such 
statements before, for the entire and crystalline 
impudence of this drew no retort from his stolidity. 
He seemed to consider it as he considered the 
other representations made to him, without hearing 
it. A railroad president, weighing the advantages 
of rival towns, could not find it within his con- 
ception of dignity to ask which of the natural 
products of Topaz sought relief through the Gulf. 
But if Mutrie could have asked such a question, 
Tarvin would have answered unblushingly, “ Rust- 


99 


ler’s.” He implied this freely in the suggestion 


which he made immediately in the form of a con- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 49 


cession. Of course, he said, if the road wanted to 
tap the mineral wealth of the country behind 
Rustler it would be a simple matter to run a branch 
road up there, and bring down the ore to be smelted 
at Topaz. Rustler had a value to the road as a 
mining centre; he didn’t pretend to dispute that. 
But a mineral road would bring down all the ore 
as well as a main line, make the same traffic for 
the road, and satisfy all proper claims of Rustler 
to consideration, while leaving the junction where 
it belonged by virtue of natural position. 

He boldly asked the president how he expected 
to get up steam and speed for the climb over the 
Pass if he made Rustler the end of the division, 
and changed engines there. The place was already 
in the mountains; as a practical railroad-man the 
president must know that his.engines could get 
no start from Rustler. The heavy grade by which 
the railroad would have to get out of the place, 
beginning in the town itself, prohibited the idea 
of making it the end of a division. If his engines, 
by good luck, weren’t stalled on the grade, what 
did he think of the annual expense involved in 
driving heavy trains daily at a high mountain from 
the vantage-ground of a steep slope? What the 
Three C.’s wanted for the end of their division 
and their last stop before the climb over the Pass 
was a place like Topaz, designed for them by nature, 


EK 


50 THE NAULAHKA. 


built in the centre of a plain, which the railroad 
could traverse at a level for five miles before attack- 
ing the hills. 

This point Tarvin made with the fervor and 
relief born of dealing with one solid and irrefragable 
fact. It was really his best argument, and he saw 
that it had reached the president as the latter took 
up his reins silently and led the way back to town. 
But another glance at Mutrie’s face told him that 
he had failed hopelessly in his main contention. 
The certainty of this would have been heart-break- 
ing if he had not expected to fail. Success lay 
elsewhere; but before trying that he had determined 
to use every other means. 

Tarvin’s eye rested lovingly on his town as they 
turned their horses again toward the cluster of 
dwellings scattered irregularly in the midst of the 
wide valley. She might be sure that he would see 
her through. 

Of course the Topaz of his affections melted in 
and out of the Topaz of fact by shadings and 
subtleties which no measurement could record. 
The relation of the real Topaz to Tarvin’s Topaz, 
or to the Topaz of any good citizen of the place, 
was a matter which no friendly observer could wish 
to press. In Tarvin’s own case it was impossible 
to say where actual belief stopped and willingness 
to believe went on. What he knew was that he 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 51 


did believe; and with him the best possible reason 
for faith in Topaz would have been that it needed 
to be believed in hard. The need would only have 
been another reason for liking it. 

To the ordered Eastern eye the city would have 
seemed a raw, untidy, lonely collection of ragged 
wooden buildings sprawling over a level plain. 
But this was only another proof that one can see 
only what one brings to the seeing. It was not so 
that Tarvin saw it; and he would not have thanked 
the Easterner who should have taken refuge in 
praise of his snow-whitened hills, walling the 
valley in a monstrous circle. The Easterner might 
keep his idea that Topaz merely blotted a beautiful 
picture; to Tarvin the picture was Topaz’s scenery, 
and the scenery only an incident of Topaz. It 
was one of her natural advantages — her own, like 
her climate, her altitude, and her board of trade. 

He named the big mountains to the president as 
they rode; he showed him where their big irrigat- 
ing-ditch led the water down out of the heights, 
and where it was brought along under the shadow 
of the foothills before it started across the plain 
toward Topaz; he told him the number of patients 
in their hospital, decently subduing his sense of 
their numerousness, as a testimony to the prosperity 
of the town; and as they rode into the streets he 
pointed out the opera-house, the post-office, the 


RsitY OF \LLINO! 


E 
Buy LIBRARY 


52 THE NAULAHKA. 


public-school, and the court-house, with the modesty 
a mother summons who shows her first-born. 

It was at least as much to avoid thinking as to 
exploit the merits of Topaz that he spared the 
president nothing. Through all his advocacy 
another voice had made itself heard, and now, in 
the sense of momentary failure, the bitterness of 
another failure caught him with a fresh twinge; 
for since his return he had seen Kate, and knew 
that nothing short of a miracle would prevent her 
from starting for India within three days. In 
contempt of the man who was making this possible, 
and in anger and desperation, he had spoken at 
last directly to Sheriff, appealing to him by all 
he held most dear to stop this wickedness. But 
there are limp rags which no buckram can stiffen: 
and Sheriff, willing as he was to oblige, could not 
take strength into his fibre from the outside, though 
Tarvin offered him all of his. His talk with Kate, 
supplemented by this barren interview with her 
father, had given him a sickening sense of power- 
lessness from which nothing but a large success 
in another direction could rescue him. He thirsted 
for success, and it had done him good to attack 
the president, even with the force that 
he must fail with him. 

He could forget Kate's existence while he song 
for Topaz, but he remembered it with a pang as 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST, 53 


he parted from Mutrie. He had her promise to 
make one of the party he was taking to the Hot 
Springs that afternoon; if it had not been for that 
he could almost have found it in his heart to let 
Topaz take care of herself for the remainder of the 
president’s stay. As it was, he looked forward to 
the visit to the Springs as a last opening to hope. 
He meant to make a final appeal; he meant to have 
it out with Kate, for he could not believe in defeat, 
and he could not think that she would go. 

The excursion to the Hot Springs was designed 
to show the president and Mrs. Mutrie what a 
future Topaz must have as a winter resort, if all 
other advantages failed her; and they had agreed 
to go with the party which Tarvin had hastily got 
together. With a view to a little quiet talk with 
Kate, he had invited three men besides Sheriff — 
Maxim, the post-master; Heckler, the editor of 
the “Topaz Telegram” (both his colleagues on the 
board of trade); and a pleasant young Englishman 
named Carmathan. He expected them to do some 
of the talking to the president, and to give him 
half an hour with Kate, without detriment to 
Mutrie’s impressions of Topaz. It had occurred to 
him that the president might be ready by this 
time for a fresh view of the town, and Heckler 
was the man to give it to him. 

Carmathan had come to Topaz two years before 


54: THE NAULAHKA. 


in his capacity of colonizing younger son, to engage 
in the cattle business, equipped with a riding-crop, 
top-boots, and $2000 in money. He had lost the 
money; but he knew now that riding-crops were 
not used in punching cattle, and he was at the 
moment using this knowledge, together with other 
information gathered on the same subject, in the 
calling of cowboy on a neighboring range. He 
was getting $30 a month, and was accepting his 
luck with the philosophy which comes to the 
adoptive as well as to the native-born citizens of 
the West. Kate liked him for the pride and pluck 
which did not allow him the easy remedy of writing 
home, and for other things; and for the first half 
of their ride to the Hot Springs they rode side by 
side, while Tarvin made Mr. and Mrs. Mutrie look 
up at the rocky heights between which they began 
to pass. He showed them the mines burrowing 
into the face of the rock far aloft, and explained 
the geological formation with the purely practical 
learning of a man who buys and sells mines. The 
road, which ran alongside the track of the railroad 
already going through Topaz, wandered back and 
forth over it from time to time, as Tarvin said, at 
the exact angle which the Three C.’s would be 
choosing later. Once a train labored past them, 
tugging up the heavy grade that led to the town. 
The narrowing gorge was the first closing in of 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 55 


the hills, which, after widening again, gathered in 
the great cliffs of the caiion twenty miles below, to 
face each other across the chasm. The sweep of 
pictured rock above their heads lifted itself into 
strange, gnarled crags, or dipped suddenly and 
swam on high in straining peaks; but for the most 
part it was sheer wall—blue and brown and 
purplish-red umber, ochre, and the soft hues 
between. 

Tarvin dropped back, and ranged his horse 
beside Kate’s. Carmathan, with whom he was in 
friendly relation, gave place to him instantly, and 
rode forward to join the others in advance. 

She lifted her speaking eyes as he drew rein 
beside her, and begged him silently to save them 
both the continuance of a hopeless contest; but 
Tarvin’s jaw was set, and he would not have 
listened to an angel’s voice. 

“TI tire you by talking of this thing, Kate. I 
know it. But I’ve got to talk of it. I’ve got to 
save you.” 

* Don’t try any more, Nick,” she answered gently. 
“Please don’t. It’s my salvation to go. It is 
the one thing I want to do. It seems to me some- 
times, when I think of it, that it was perhaps the 
thing I was sent into the world to do. We are all 
sent into the world to do something, don’t you 
think so, Nick, even if it’s ever so tiny and humble 


56 THE NAULAHKA. 


and no account? I’ve got to do it, Nick. Make 
it easy for me.” 

“1711 be—hammered if I will! Ill make it 
hard. That’s what I’m here for. Every one else 
yields to that vicious little will of yours. Your 
father and mother let you do what you like. They 
don’t begin to know what you are running your 
precious head into. I can’t replace it. Can you? 
That makes me positive. It also makes me ugly.” 

Kate laughed. 

“It does make you ugly, Nick. But I don’t 
mind. I think I lke it that you should care. If 
I could stay at home tor any one, I’d do it for you. 
Beleve that, won’t you?” 

“Oh, I’ll believe, and thank you into the bar- 
gain. But what good will it do me? I don’t 
want belief. I want you.” 

“T know, Nick. I know. But India wants me 
more —or not me, but what I can do, and what 
women like me can do. ‘There’s a cry from 
Macedonia, ‘Come over and help us!’ While I 
hear that cry I can find no pleasure in any. other 
good. IT could be your wife, Nick. That’s easy. 
But with that in my ears I should be in torture 
every moment.” 

“'That’s rough on me,” suggested Tarvin, glance: 
ing ruefully at the cliffs above them. 

“Oh, no. It has nothing to do with you.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Sif 


“Yes,” returned he, shutting his lps, “that’s 
just it.” 

She could not help smiling a little again at his 
face. : 

“YT will never marry any one else, if it helps 
you any to know that, Nick,” she said, with a 
sudden tenderness in her voice. 

“But you won’t marry me?” 

“No,” she said quietly, firmly, simply. 

He meditated this answer a moment in bitterness. 
They were riding at a walk, and he let the reins 
drop on his pony’s neck as he said, “Oh, well. 
Don’t matter about me. It isn’t all selfishness, 
dear. Ido want you to stay for my own sake, I want 
you for my very own, I want you always _ beside 
me, I want you— want you; but it isn’t for that 
I ask you to stay. It’s because I can’t think of 
you throwing yourself into the dangers and horrors 
of that life alone, unprotected, a girl. I can’t 
think of it and sleep nights. I daren’t think of it. 
The thing’s monstrous. It’s hideous. It’s absurd. 
You won’t do it!” 

“IT must not think of myself,” she answered in 
a shaken voice. “I must think of them.” 

“But J must think of you. And you sha’n’t 
bribe me, you sha’n’t tempt me, to think of any 
one else. You take it all too hard. Dearest girl,” 
he entreated, lowering his voice, “are you in charge 


58 THE NAULAHKA. 


of the misery of the earth? ‘There is misery else- 
where, too, and pain. Can you stop it? You’ve 
got to live with the sound of the suffering of 
millions in your ears all your life, whatever you 
do. We’re all in for that. We can’t get away 
from it. We pay that price for daring to be happy 
for one little second.” 

“IT know, I know. I’m not trying to save 
myself. I’m ‘not trying to stifle the sound.” 

“No; but you are trying to stop it, and you 
can’t. It’s like trying to scoop up the ocean with 
a dipper. You can’t do it. But you can spoil 
your life in trying; and if you’ve got a scheme by 
which you can come back and have a spoiled life 
over again, I know some one who hasn’t. O Kate, 
I don’t ask anything for myself, —or, at least, I 
only ask everything,—but do think of that a 
moment sometimes when you are putting your arms 
around the earth, and trying to lift it up in your 
soft little hands — you are spoiling more lives than 
your own. Great Scott, Kate, if you are looking 
for some misery to set right, you needn’t go off 
this road. Begin on me.” 

She shook her head sadly. “I must begin where 
I see my duty, Nick. I don’t say that I shall 
make much impression on the dreadful sum of 
human trouble, and I don’t say it is for everybody 
to do what I’m going to try to do; but it’s right 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 59 


forme. I know that, and that’s all any of us can 
know. Oh, to be sure that people are a little better 
—if only a little better — because you have lived,” 
she exclaimed, the look of exaltation coming into 
her eyes; “to know that you have lessened by the 
slightest bit the sorrow and suffering that must 
go on all the same, would be good. Even you 
must feel that, Nick,” she said, gently laying her 
hand on his arm as they rode. 

Tarvin compressed his lips. “Oh, yes; I feel 
it,” he said desperately. 

“But you feel something else. So do I.” 

“Then feel it more. Feel it enough to trust 
yourself to me. I'll find a future for you. You 
shall bless everybody with your goodness. Do you 
think I should like you without it? And you shall 
begin by blessing me.” 

“T can’t! I can’t!” she cried in distress. 

“You can’t do anything else. You must come 
to me at last. Do you think I could live if I didn’t 
think that? But I want to save you all that lies 
between. I don’t want you to be driven into my 
arms, little girl. I want you to come—and come 
now.” 

For answer to this she only bowed her head on 
the sleeve of her riding-habit, and began to cry 
softly. Nick’s fingers closed on the hand with 
which she nervously clutched the pommel of her 


saddle. 


60 THE NAULAHKA. 


“You, can't, dear?” 

The brown head was shaken vehemently. Tarvin 
ground his teeth. 

“All right; don’t mind.” 

He took her yielding hand into his, speaking 
gently, as he would have spoken to a child in 
distress. In the silent moment that lengthened 
between them Tarvin gave it up—not Kate, not 
his love, not his changeless resolve to have her for 
his own, but just the question of her going to 
India. She could go if she liked. There would 
be two of them. 

When they reached the Hot Springs he took an 
immediate opportunity to engage the willing Mrs. 
Mutrie in talk, and to lead her aside, while Sheriff 
showed the president the water steaming out of 
the ground, the baths, and the proposed site of a 
giant hotel. Kate,.willing to hide her red eyes 
from Mrs. Mutrie’s sharp gaze, remained with her 
father. 

When Tarvin had led the president’s wife to the 
side of the stream that went plunging down past 
the Springs to find a tomb at last in the cafion 
below, he stopped short in the shelter of a clump 
of cottonwoods. 

“Do you really want that necklace?” he asked 
her abruptly. 

She laughed again, gurglingly, amusedly, this 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 61 


time, with the little air of spectacle which she 
could not help lending to all she did. 

“Want it?” she repeated. ‘Of course I want it. 
I want the moon, too.” 

Tarvin laid a silencing hand upon her arm. 

“You shall have this,” he said positively. 

She ceased laughing, and grew almost pale at 
his earnestness. 

“What do you mean?” she asked quickly. 

“It would please you? You would be glad of 
it?” heasked. “What would you do to get it?” 

“Go back to Omaha on my hands and knees,” 
she answered with equal earnestness. “Crawl to 
India.” 

“All right,” returned Tarvin, vigorously. ‘That 
settlos it. Listen! I want the Three C.’s to come 
to Topaz. You want this. Can we trade?” 

“But you can never—” 

“No matter; Pll attend to my -part. Can you 
do yours?” 


99 


“You mean —”’ she began. 

“Yes,” nodded her companion, decisively; “I do. 
Can you fix it?” 

Tarvin, fiercely repressed and controlled, stood 
before her with clenched teeth, and hands _ that 
drove -the nails into his palms, awaiting her answer. 

She tilted her fair head on one side with depreca- 


tion, and regarded him out of the vanishing angle 


62 THE NAULAHKA. 


of one eye provocatively, with a lingering, tantaliz- 
ing look of adequacy. 


b] 


“JT guess what I say to Jim goes,” she said at 
last with a dreamy smile. 

“Then it’s a bargain?” 

“Yes,” she answered. 

“Shake hands on it.” 

They joined hands. For a moment they stood 
confronted, penetrating each other’s eyes. 

“You'll really get it for me?” 

SG 

“You won’t go back on me?” 

Re Ota: 

He pressed her hand so that she gave a little 
scream. 

“Ouch! You hurt.” 

“All right,” he said hoarsely, as he dropped her 
hand. “It’s a trade. I start for India to-morrow. ” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 63 


‘CHAPTER V. 


Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan 
brown, 

For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the 
Christian down ; 

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the 
late deceased, 

And the epitaph drear: ‘‘ A fool lies here who tried to hustle the 
East.”’ * 


Solo from Libretto of Naulahka. 

TARVIN stood on the platform of the station at 
Rawut Junction watching the dust cloud that 
followed the retreating Bombay mail. When it 
had disappeared the heated air above the stone 
ballast began its dance again, and he turned blink- 
ing to India. 

It was amazingly simple to come fourteen thou- 
sand miles. He had lain still in a ship for a certain 
time, and then had transferred himself to stretch at 
full length, in his shirt-sleeves, on the leather- 
padded bunk of the train which had brought him 
from Calcutta to Rawut Junction. The journey 
was long only as it kept him from sight of Kate, 
and kept him filled with thought of her. But was 


Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co, 


64 THE NAULAHKA. 


this what he had come for—the yellow desolation 
of a Rajputana desert, and the pinched-off per- 
spective of the track? Topaz was cosier when 
they had got the church, the saloon, the school, 
and three houses up; the loneliness made him 
shiver. He saw that they did not mean to do any 
more of it. It was a desolation which doubled 
desolateness, because it was left for done. It was 
final, intended, absolute. The grim solidity of 
the cut-stone station-house, the solid masonry of 
the empty platform, the mathematical exactitude 
of the station name-board looked for no future. 
No new railroad could help Rawut Junction. It 
had no ambition. It belonged to the Government. 
There was’ no green thing, no curved line, no 
promise of life that produces, within eyeshot of 
Rawut Junction. The mauve railroad-creeper on 
the station had been allowed to die from lack of 
attention. 

Tarvin was saved from the more positive pangs 
of homesickness by a little healthy human rage. 
A single man, fat, brown, clothed in white gauze, 
and wearing a black velvet cap on his head, stepped 
out from the building. This station-master and 
permanent population of Rawut Junction accepted 
Tarvin as a feature of the landscape: he did not 
look at him. ‘Tarvin began to sympathize with the 
South in the war of the rebellion. | 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 65 


“When does the next train leave for Rhatore?’ 
he asked. 


“There is no train,’ 


* returned the man, pausing 


with precise deliberation between the words. He 
sent his speech abroad with an air of detachment, 
irresponsibly, like the phonograph. 

“No train? Where’s your time-table? Where’s 
your railroad guide? Where’s your Pathfinder?” 

“No train at all of any kind whatever.” 

“Then what the devil are you here for?” 

“Sir, I am the station-master of this station, 
and it is prohibited using profane language to 
employees of this company.” 

“Oh, are you? Is it? Well, see here, my 
friend — you station-master of the steep-edge of the 
jumping-off-place, if you want to save your life 
you will tell me how I get to Rhatore — quick!” 

The man was silent. 

“Well, what do I do, anyway?” shouted the 
West. 

“What do I know?” answered the East. 

Tarvin stared at the brown being in white, 
beginning at his patent-leather shoes, surmounted 
by openwork socks, out of which the calf of his 
lee bulged, and ending with the velvet smoking- 
cap on his head. ‘The passionless regard of the 
Oriental, borrowed from the purple hills behind 
his station, made him wonder for one profane, 

F 


66 THE NAULAHKA. 


faithless, and spiritless moment whether Topaz ana 
Kate were worth all they were costing. 

“Ticket, please,” said the baboo. 

The gloom darkened. This thing was here to 
take tickets, and would do it though men loved, 
and fought, and despaired and died at his feet. 

“See here,” cried Tarvin, “you shiny-toed fraud; 
you agate-eyed pillar of alabaster—” But he did 
not go on; speech failed in a shout of rage and 
despair. The desert swallowed all impartially; and 
the baboo, turning with awful quiet, drifted through 
the door of the station-house, and locked it behind 
him. 

Tarvin whistled persuasively at the door with 
uplifted eyebrows, jingling an American quarter 
against a rupee in his pocket. The window of 
the ticket-office opened a little way, and the baboo 
showed an inch of impassive face. 

“Speaking now in offeshal capacity, your honor 
can getting to Rhatore via country bullock-cart.” 

“Find me the bullock-cart,” said Tarvin. 

“Your honor granting commission on transac- 
tion?” 

“Cert.” It was the tone that conveyed the idea 
to the head under the smoking-cap. 

The window was dropped. Afterward, but not 
too immediately afterward, a long-drawn howl made 
itself heard — the howl of a weary warlock invoking 
a dilatory ghost. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 67 


“OQ Moti! Moti! O-o-h!” 

“Ah there, Moti!’? murmured Tarvin, as _ he 
vaulted over the low stone wall, gripsack in hand, 
and stepped out through the ticket wicket into 
Rajputana. His habitual gaiety and confidence 
had returned with the prospect of motion. 

Between himself and a purple circle of hills lay 
fifteen miles of profitless, rolling ground, jagged 
with laterite rocks, and studded with unthrifty 
trees —all given up to drought and dust, and all 
colorless as the sun-bleached locks of a child of the 
prairies. Very far away to the right the silver 
gleam of a salt lake showed, and a formless blue 
haze of heavier forest. ‘Sombre, desolate, oppres- 
sive, withering under a brazen sun, it smote him 
with its likeness to his own prairies, and with its 
homesick unlikeness. 

Apparently out of a crack in the earth—§in fact, 
as he presently perceived, out of a spot where two 
waves of plain folded in upon each other and 
contained a village—-came a pillar of dust, the 
heart of which was a bullock-cart. The distant 
whine of the wheels sharpened, as it drew near, 
to the full-bodied shriek that Tarvin knew when 
they put the brakes suddenly on a freight coming 
into Topaz on the down grade. But this was in 
no sense a freight. The wheels were sections of 
tree butts—square for the most part. Four 


68 THE NAULAHKA. 


unbarked poles bounded the corners of a flat body; 
the sides were made of netted rope of cocoanut 
fibre. Two bullocks, a little larger than New- 
foundlands, smaller than Alderneys, drew a vehicle 
which might have contained the half of a horse*s 
load. 

The cart drew up at the station, and the bullocks, 
after contemplating Tarvin for a moment, lay down. 
Tarvin seated himself on his gripsack, rested his 
shaggy head in his hands, and expended himself 
in mirth. . 

“Sail in,” he instructed the baboo; “make your 
bargain. I’m in no hurry.” 

Then began a scene of declamation and riot to 
which a quarrel in a Leadville gambling saloon 
was a poor matter. The impassiveness of the 
station-master deserted hin like a wind-blown gar- 
ment. He harangued, gesticulated, and cursed; 
and the driver; naked except for a blue loin-cloth, 
was nothing behind him. ‘They pointed at Tarvin; 
they seemed to be arguing over his birth and 
ancestry; for all he knew they were appraising 
his weight. When they seemed to be on the brink 
of an amicable solution, the question reopened 
itself, and they went back to the beginning, and 
reclassified him and the journey. 

Tarvin applauded both parties, sicking one on 
the other impartially for the first ten minutes. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 69 


Then he besought them to stop, and when they 
would not he discovered that it was hot, and swore 
at them. 

The driver had for the moment exhausted himself 
when the baboo turned suddenly on Tarvin, and, 
clutching him by the arm, cried, almost shouting, 
“All arrange, sir! all arrange! This man most 
uneducated man, sir. You giving me the money, 
I arrange everything.” 

Swift as thought, the driver had caught his 
other arm, and was imploring him in a strange 
tongue not to listen to his opponent. As Tarvin 
stepped back they followed him with uplifted hands 
of entreaty and representation, the station-master 
forgetting his English, and the driver his respect 
for the white man. ‘Tarvin, eluding them both, 
pitched his gripsack into the bullock-cart, bounded 
in himself, and shouted the one Indian word he 
knew. It happened, fortunately, to be the word 


that moves all India—“ Challo!” which, being 





interpreted, is “Go on!” 

So, leaving strife and desolation behind him, 
rode out into the desert of Rajputana Nicholas 
Tarvin of Topaz, Colorado. 


10 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER VI. 


In the State of Kot-Kumharsen, where the wild dacoits abound 
And the Thakurs live in castles on the hills, 
Where the bunnia and bunjara in alternate streaks are found 
And the Rajah cannot liquidate his bills ; 
Where the Agent Sahib Bahadur shoots the black-buck for his 
larder 
From the tonga which he uses as mach4an, 
*Twas a white man from the west, came expressly to investigate 
the natural wealth of Hindustan.* 
Song from Libretto of Naulahka. 


UNDER certain conditions four days can dwarf 
eternity. Tarvin had found these circumstances 
in the bullock-cart from which he crawled ninety- 
six hours after the bullocks had got up from the 
dust at Rawut Junction. They stretched behind 
him — those hours—in a maddening, creaking, 
dusty, deliberate procession. In an hour the bul- 
lock-cart went two and a half miles. Fortunes 
had been made and lost in Topaz —happy Topaz! 
—while the cart ploughed its way across a red-hot 
river-bed shut in between two walls of belted 
sand. New cities might have risen in the West 
and fallen to ruins older than Thebes while, after 


* Copyright, 1892. by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND FEAST. vil 


any of their meals by the wayside, the driver 
droned over a water-pipe something less wieldy 
than a Gatling-gun. In these waits and in others 
— it seemed to him that the journey was chiefly 
made up of waits — Tarvin saw himself distanced 
in the race of life by every male citizen of the 
United States, and groaned with the consciousness 
that he could never overtake them, or make up 
this lost time. 

Great gray cranes with scarlet heads stalked 
through the high grass of the swamps in the pockets 
of the hills. The snipe and the quail hardly 
troubled themselves to move from beneath the noses 
of the bullocks, and once in the dawn, lying upon 
a glistening rock, he saw two young panthers 
playing together like kittens. 

A few miles from Rawut Junction his. driver 
had taken from underneath the cart a sword, which 
he hung around his neck, and sometimes used on 
the bullocks as a goad. Tarvin saw that every 
man went armed in this country, as in his own. 
But three feet of clumsy steel struck him as a poor 
substitute for the delicate and nimble revolver. 

Once he stood up in the cart and hallooed, for he 
thought he saw the white top of a prairie schooner. 
But it was only a gigantic cotton-wain, drawn by 
sixteen bullocks, dipping and plunging across the 
ridges. Through all, the scorching Indian sun 


az THE NAULAHKA. 


blazed down on him, making him wonder how he 
had ever dared praise the perpetual sunshine ct 
Colorado. At dawn the rocks glittered like 
diamonds, and at noonday the sands of the rivers 
troubled his eyes with a million flashing sparksa 
At eventide a cold, dry wind would spring up, 
and the hills lying along the horizon took a hundred 
colors under the hght of the sunset. Then Tarvin 
realized the meaning of “the glorious East,” for 
the hills were turned to heaps of ruby and amethyst, 
while between them the mists in the valleys were 
opal. He lay in the bullock-cart on his back and 
stared at the sky, dreaming of the Naulahka, and 
wondering whether it would match the scenery. 

“The clouds know what I’m up to. It’s a good 
omen,” he said to himself. 

He cherished the definite and simple plan of 
buying the Naulahka and paying for it in good 
money to be raised at Topaz by bonding the town 
—not, of course, ostensibly for any such purpose. 
Topaz was good for it, he believed, and if the 
Maharajah wanted too steep a price when they 
came to talk business he would form a syndicate. 

As the cart swayed from side to side, bumping 
his head, he wondered where Kate was. She might, 
under favorable conditions, be in Bombay by this 
time. That much he.knew from careful considera- 
tion of her route; but a girl alone could not pass 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. to 


from hemisphere to hemisphere as swiftly as an 
unfettered man spurred by love of herself and of 
Topaz. Perhaps she was resting for a little time 
with the Zenana Mission at Bombay. He refused 
absolutely to admit to himself that she had fallen 
ill by the way. She was resting, receiving her 
orders, absorbing a few of the wonders of the strange 
lands he had contemptuously thrust behind him in 
his eastward flight; but in a few days at most she 
ought to be at Rhatore, whither the bullock-cart 
was taking him. 

He smiled and smacked his lips with pure enjoy- 
ment as he thought of their meeting, and amused 
himself with fancies about her fancies touching 
his present whereabouts. 

He had left Topaz for San Francisco by the night 
train over the Pass a little more than twenty-four 
hours after his conference with Mrs. Mutrie, saying 
good by to no one, and telling nobody where he 
was going. Kate perhaps wondered at the fervor 
of his “Good evening” when he left her at her 
father’s house on their return from their ride to 
the Hot Springs. But she said nothing, and Tarvin 
contrived by an effort to take himself off without 
giving himself away. He had made a quiet sale 
of a block of town lots the next day at a sacrifice, 
to furnish himself with money for the voyage; but 
this was too much in the way of his ordinary business 


74 THE NAULAHKA. 


to excite comment, and he was finally able to gaze 
down at the winking lights of Topaz in the valley 
from the rear platform of his train, as it climbed 
up over the Continental Divide, with the certainty 
that the town he was going to India to bless and 
boom was not “on to” his beneficent scheme. To 
make sure that the right story went back to the 
town, he told the conductor of the train, in strict 
confidence, while he smoked his usual cigar with 
him, about a little placer-mining scheme in Alaska 
which he was going there to nurse for a while. 

The conductor embarrassed him for a moment 
by asking what he was going to do about his elec- 
tion meanwhile; but Tarvin was ready for him 
here too. He said that he had that fixed. He had 
to let him into another scheme to show him how 
it was fixed, but as he bound him to secrecy again, 
this didn’t matter. 

He wondered now, however, whether that scheme 
had worked, and whether Mis. Mutrie would keep 
her promise to cable the result of the election to 
him at Rhatore. It was amusing to have to trust 
a woman to let him know whether he was a 
member of the Colorado legislature or not; but 
she was the only living person who knew his 
address, and as the idea had seemed to please her, 
in common with their whole “charming conspiracy” 
(this was what she called it), Tarvin had _ been 
content. . 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. {ii 


When he had become convinced that his eyes 
would never again be blessed with the sight of a 
white man, or his ears with the sound of intelligi- 
ble speech, the cart rolled through a gorge between 
two hills, and stopped before the counterpart of 
the station at Rawut Junction. It was a double 
cube of red sandstone, but—for this Tarvin could 
have taken it in his arms—it was full of white 
men. ‘They were undressed excessively; they were 
lying in the veranda in long chairs, and between 
each chair was a well-worn bullock trunk. 

Tarvin got himself out of the cart, unfolding 
his long stiffened legs with difficulty, and unkinking 
his muscles one by one. He was a mask of dust 
—dust beyond sand-storms or cyclones. It had 
obliterated the creases of his clothing and turned 
his black Amcrican four-button cutaway to « 
pearly white. It had done away with the dis- 
tinction between the hem of his trousers and the 
top of his shoes. It dropped off him and rolled 
up from him as he moved. His fervent “Thank 
God!” was extinguished in a dusty cough. He 
stepped into the veranda, rubbing his smarting 
eyes. 


9 


“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “Got 
anything to drink?” 
No one rose, but somebody shouted for the 


servant. A man dressed in thin Tussur silk. 


76 THE NAULAHKA. 


yellow and ill-fitting as the shuck on a dried cob, 
and absolutely colorless as to his face, nodded to 
him and asked languidly: 

“Who are you for?” ‘ 

“No? Have they got them here too?” said 
Tarvin to himself, recognizing in that brief ques- 
tion the universal shibboleth of the commercial 
traveller. 

He went down the long line and twisted each 
hand in pure joy and thankfulness before he began 
to draw comparisons beween the East and the West, 
and to ask himself if these idle, silent lotus-eaters 
could belong to the profession with which he had 
swapped stories, commodities, and political opinions 
this many a year in smoking-cars and hotel offices. 
Certainly they were debased and spiritless parodies 
of the alert, aggressive, joyous, brazen animals 
whom he knew as the drummers of the West. But 
perhaps —a twinge in his back reminded him — 
they had all reached this sink of desolation via 
country bullock-cart. | 

He thrust his nose into twelve inches of whiskey 
and soda, and remained there till there was no more; 
then dropped into a vacant chair and surveyed the 
group again. 

“Did some one ask who I was for? I’m for 
myself, I suppose, as much as any one — travelling 
for pleasure.” | 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. TH 


He had not time to enjoy the absurdity of this, 
for all five men burst into a shout of laughter, 
like the laughter of men who have long been 
estranged from mirth. 

“Pleasure!” cried one. “O Lord!” “Pleasure! 
You've come to the wrong place.” 

“It’s just as well you’ve come for pleasure. 
You’d be dead before you did business,” said 
another. 

“You might as well try to get blood out of a 
stone. I’ve been here over a fortnight.” 

“Great Scott! What for?” asked Tarvin. 

“We've all been here over a week,” growled 
a fourth. 

“But what’s your lay? What’s your racket?” 

“Guess you’re an American, ain’t you?” 

“Yes; Topaz, Colorado.” The statement had -.no 
effect upon them. He might as well have spoken 
in Greek. “But what’s the trouble?” 

“Why, the King married two wives yesterday. 
You can hear the gongs going in the city now. 
He’s trying to equip a new regiment of cavalry for 
the service of the Indian Government, and he’s 
quarrelled with his Political Resident. I’ve been 
living at Colonel Nolan’s door for three days. He 
says he can’t do anything without authority from 
the supreme Government. I’ve tried to catch the 
King when he goes out pig-shooting. I write 


78 THE NAULAHKA. 


every day to the Prime Minister, when I’m not 
riding around the city on a camel; and here’s a 
bunch of letters from the firm asking why I don’t 
collect.” ; 

At the end of ten minutes Tarvin began to 
understand that these washed-out representatives 
of half a dozen firms in Calcutta and Bombay were 
hopelessly besieging this place on their regular 
spring campaign to collect a little on account from 
a king who ordered by the ton and paid by the 
scruple. He had purchased guns, dressing-cases, 
mirrors, mantlepiece ornaments, crochet-work, the 
iridescent Christmas-tree glass balls, saddlery, mail- 
phaétons, four-in-hands, scent-bottles, surgical in- 
struments, chandeliers, and chinaware by the dozen, 
gross, or score as his royal fancy prompted. When 
he lost interest in his purchases he lost interest 
in paying for them; and as few things amused his 
jaded fancy more than twenty minutes, it some- 
times came to pass that the mere purchase was 
sufficient, and the costly packing-cases from Cal- 
cutta were never opened. ‘The ordered peace of 
the Indian Empire forbade him to take up arms 
against his fellow sovereigns, the only lasting 
delight that he or his ancestors had known for thou- 
sands of years; but there remained a certain modi- 
fied interest of war in battling with bill-collectors. 
On one side stood the Political Resident of the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. (is 


State, planted there to teach him good government, 
and, above all, economy; on the other side — that 
is to say, at the palace gates — might generally be 
found a commercial traveller, divided between his 
contempt of an evasive debtor and his English 
reverence for a king. Between these two his 
Majesty went forth to take his pleasure in pig- 
sticking, in racing, in the drilling of his army, in 
the ordering of more unnecessaries, and in _ the 
fitful government of his womankind, who knew 
considerably more of each commercial traveller’s 
claims than even the Prime Minister. Behind 
these was the Government of India, explicitly 
refusing to guarantee payment of the King’s debts, 
and from time to time sending him, on a blue 
velvet cushion, the jewelled insignia of an imperial 
order to sweeten the remonstrances of the Political 
Resident. 

“Well, I hope you make the King pay for it,” 
said Tarvin. 

“ How’s that?” 

“Why, in my country, when a customer sillies 
about like that, promising to meet a man one day 
at the hotel and not showing up and then promising 
to meet him the next day at the store and not pay- 
ing, a@ drummer says to himself: ‘Oh, all right. 
If you want to pay my board, and my wine, liquor, 
and cigar bill, while I wait, don’t mind me. I'll 


80 THE NAULAHKA. 


mosey along somehow.’ And after the second day 
he charges up his poker losings to him.” 

“Ah, that’s interesting. But how does he get . 
those items into his account?” 

“'They go into the next bill of goods he sells 
him, of course. He makes the prices right for 
that.” 

“Oh, we can make prices right enough. The 
difficulty is to get your money.” 

“But I don’t see how you fellows have the time 
to monkey around here at this rate,” urged Tarvin, 
mystified. “Where I come from a man makes his 
trip on schedule time, and when he’s a day behind 
he’ll wire to his customer in the town ahead to 
come down to the station and meet him, and he’ll 
sell him a bill of goods while the train waits. He 
could sell him the earth while one of your bullock- 
carts went a mile. And as to getting your money, 
why don’t you get out an attachment on the old 
sinner? In your places I’d attach the whole country 
on him. I’d attach the palace, I’d attach his 
crown. Id get a judgment against him, and I'd 
execute it too—personally, if necessary. I’d lock 
the old fellow up and rule Rajputana for him, if 
I had to; but I’d have his money.” 

A compassionate smile ran around the group. 


> 


“That’s because you don’t know,” said several at 


once. Then they began to explain voluminously. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 81 


There was no languor about them now; they all 
spoke together. 

The men in the veranda, though they seemed 
idle, were no fools, Tarvin perceived after a time. 
Lying still as beggars at the gate of greatness was 
their method of doing business. It wasted time, 
but in the end some sort of payment was sure to 
be made, especially, explained the man in the 
yellow coat, if you could interest the Prime Minister 
in your needs, and through him wake the interests 
of the King’s women. 

A flicker of memory made Tarvin smile faintly 
as he thought of Mrs. Mutrie. 

The man in the yellow coat went on, and Tarvin 
learned that the head queen was a murderess, con- 
victed of poisoning her former husband. She had 
lain crouching in an iron cage awaiting execution 
when the King first saw her, and the King had 
demanded whether she would poison him if he 
married her, so the tale ran. Assuredly, she re- 
pled, if he treated her as her late husband had 
treated her. ‘Thereupon the King had married her, 
partly to please his fancy, mainly through sheer 
delight in her brutal answer. 

This gypsy without lineage held in less than a 
year King and state under her feet—feet which 
women of the household sang spitefully were 
roughened with travel of shameful roads. She 


G 


82 THE NAULAHKA. 


had borne the King one son, in whom all her pride 
and ambition centred, and, after his birth, she 
had apphed herself with renewed energy to the 
maintenance of mastery in the state. The supreme 
Government, a thousand miles away, knew that 
she was a force to be reckoned with, and had no 
love for her. The white-haired, soft-spoken Politi- 
cal Resident, Colonel Nolan, who lived in the 
pink house a bow-shot from the city gates, was 
often thwarted by her. Her latest victory was 
peculiarly humiliating to him, for she» had dis- 
covered that a rock-hewn canal designed to supply 
the city with water in summer would pass through 
an orange-garden under her window, and had used 
her influence with the Maharajah against it. The 
Maharajah had thereupon caused it to be taken 
around by another way at an expense of a quarter 
of his year’s revenue, and in the teeth of the almost 
tearful remonstrance of the Resident. 

Sitabhai, the gypsy, behind her silken curtains, 
had both heard and seen this interview between 
the Rajah and his Political, and had laughed. 

Tarvin devoured all this. eagerly. It fed his 
purpose; it was grist to his mill, even if it tumbled 
his whole plan of attack topsy-turvy. It opened upa 
new world for which he had no measures and stand- 
ards, and in which he must be frankly and constantly 
dependent on the inspiration of the next moment. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 83 


He couldn’t know too much of this world before 
taking his first step toward the Naulahka, and he 
was willing to hear all that these lazy fellows 
would tell him. He began to feel as if he should 
have to go back and learn his A B C’s over again. 
What pleased this strange being they called King? 
what appealed to him? what tickled him? above 
all, what did he fear?. ; 

_ He was thinking much and rapidly. 

But he said, “No wonder your King is bank- 
rupt if he has such a court to look after.” 

“He’s one of the richest princes in India,” 
returned the man in the yellow coat. “He doesn’t 
know himself what he has.” 

“Why doesn’t he pay his debts, then, instead 
of keeping you mooning about here?” 

“Because he’s a native. He’d spend a hundred 
thousand pounds on a marriage-feast, and delay 
payment of a bill for two hundred rupees four 
years.” 

“You ought to cure him of that,” insisted Tarvin. 
“Send a sheriff after the crown jewels.” 

“You don’t know Indian princes. They would 
pay a bill before they would let the crown jewels 
go. They are sacred. ‘They are part of the Govern- 
ment.” , 

“Ah, I'd give something to see the Luck of 
the State!” exclaimed a voice from one of the 


84 THE NAULAHKA. 


chairs, which Tarvin afterward learned belonged 
to the agent of a Calcutta firm of jewellers. 

“What’s that?’ he asked as casually as he 
knew how, sipping his whiskey and soda. 

“The Naulahka. Don’t you know?” 

Tarvin was saved the need of an answer by 
the man in yellow. “Pshaw! AI that talk about © 
the Naulahka is invented by the priests.” 

“T don’t think so,” returned the jeweller’s agent, 
judicially. “The King told me when I was last 
here that he had once shown it to a viceroy. But 
he is the only foreigner who has ever seen it. 
The King assured me he didn’t know where it 
was himself.” | 

“ Pooh! Do you believe in carved emeralds 
two inches square?” asked the other, turning to 
Tarvin. 

“'That’s only the centrepiece,” said the jeweller; 
“and I wouldn’t mind wagering that it’s a tallow- 
drop emerald. It isn’t that that staggers me. 
My wonder is how these chaps, who don’t care 
anything for water in a stone, could have taken 
the trouble to get together half a dozen perfect 
gems, much less fifty. They say that the necklace 
was begun when William the Conqueror came 
over.” 

“That gives them a year or two,” said Tarvin. 
“T would undertake to get a little jewelry together 
myself if you gave me eight centuries.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Rh 


His face was turned a little away from them as 
he lay back in his chair. His heart was going 
quickly. He had been through mining-trades, 
land-speculations, and cattle-deals in his time. He 
had known moments when the turn of a hair, the 
wrinkle of an eyelid, meant ruin to him. But 
they were not moments into which eight centuries 
were gathered. 

They looked at him with a remote pity in their 
eyes. 

“Five absolutely perfect specimens of the nine 
precious stones,” began the jeweller; “the ruby, 
emerald, sapphire, diamond, opal, cat’s-eye, tur- 
quoise, amethyst, and — ” 

“'Topaz?” asked Tarvin, with the air of a pro- 
prietor. 

“No; black diamond —black as night.” 

“But how do you know all these things; how 
do you get on to them?” asked Tarvin, curiously. 

“Like everything else in a native state — common 
talk, but difficult to prove. Nobody can as much 
as guess where that necklace is.” 

“Probably under the foundations of some temple 


* said the yellow-coated man. 


in the city,’ 

Tarvin, in spite of the careful guard he was 
keeping over himself, could not help kindling at 
this. He saw himself digging the city up.” 


“Where zs this city?” inquired hv. 


86 THE NAULAHKA. 


They pointed across the sun-glare, and showed 
him a rock girt by a triple line of wall. It was 
exactly like one of the many ruined cities that 
Tarvin had passed in the bullock-cart. <A rock of 
a dull and angry red surmounted that rock. Up 
to the foot of the rock ran the yellow sands of the 
actual desert — the desert that supports neither tree 
nor shrub, only the wild ass, and somewhere in its 
heart, men say, the wild camel. 

Tarvin stared through the palpitating haze of 
heat, and saw that there was neither life nor motion 
about the city. It was a little after noonday, and 
his Majesty’s subjects were asleep. This solid 
block of loneliness, then, was the visible end of 
his journey —the Jericho he had come from Topaz 
to attack. 

And he reflected, “Now, if a man should come 
from New York in a bullock-cart to whistle around 
the Sauguache Range, I wonder what sort of fool 
I’d call him!” 

He rose and stretched his dusty limbs. “ What 
time does it get cool enough to take in the town?” 
he asked. 

“Do what to the town? Better be careful. You 
might find yourself in difficulties with the Resi- 
dent,’’ warned his friendly adviser. 

Tarvin could not understand why a stroll through 
the deadest town he had ever seen should be for- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 87 


bidden. But he held his peace, inasmuch as he 
was in a strange country where nothing, save a 
certain desire for command on the part of the 
women, was as he had known it. He would take 
in the town thoroughly. Otherwise he began to fear 
that its monumental sloth— there was still no sign 
of life upon the walled rock — would swallow him 
up, or turn him into a languid Calcutta drummer. 

Something must be done at once before his wits 
were numbed. He inquired the way to the tele- 
graph-office, half-doubting, even though he saw 
the wires, the existence of a telegraph in Rhatore. 

“By the way,” one of the men called after him, 
“it’s worth remembering that any telegram you 
send here is handed all round the court and shown 
to the King.” 

Tarvin thanked him, and thought this was worth 
remembering, as he trudged on through the sand 
toward a desecrated Mohammedan mosque near the 
road to the city which was doing duty as a tele- 
eraph-office 

A trooper of the state was lying fast asleep on 
the threshold, his horse picketed to a long bamboo 
lance driven into the ground. Other sign of life 
there was none, save a few doves cooing sleepily 
in the darkness under the arch. 

Tarvin gazed about him dispiritedly for the blue 
and white sign of the Western Union, or its 


88 THE NAULAHKA. 


analogue in this queer land. He saw that the 
telegraph-wires disappeared through a hole in the 
dome of the mosque. ‘There were two or three 
low wooden doors under the archway. He opened 
one at random, and stepped upon a warm, hairy 
body, which sprang up with a grunt. ‘Tarvin had 
hardly time to draw back before a young buffalo 
calf rushed out. Undisturbed, he opened another 
door, disclosing a flight of steps eighteen inches 
wide. Up these he travelled with difficulty, hoping 
to catch the sound of the ticker. But the building 
was as silent as the tomb it had once been. He 
opened another door, and stumbled into a room, 
the domed ceiling of which was inlaid with fretted 
tracery in barbaric colors, picked out with myriads 
of tiny fragments of mirrors. The flood of color 
and the glare of the snow-white floor made him 
blink after the pitchy darkness of the staircase. 
Still, the place was undoubtedly a telegraph-office, 
for an antiquated: instrument was clamped upon 
a cheap dressing-table. The sunlight streamed 
through the gash in the dome which had been made 
to admit the telegraph-wires, and which had not 
been repaired. 

Tarvin stood in the sunlight and stared about 
him. He took off the soft, wide-brimmed Western 
hat, which he was finding too warm for this climate, 
and -mopped his forehead. As he stood in the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 89 


sunlight, straight, clean-limbed, and strong, one 
who lurked in this mysterious spot with designs 
upon him would have decided that he did not look 
a wholesome person to attack. He pulled at the 
long thin mustache which drooped at the corners 
of his mouth in a curve shaped by the’ habit of 
tugging at it in thought, and muttered picturesque 
remarks in a tongue to which these walls had never 
echoed. What chance was there of communicating 
with the United States of America from this abyss 
of oblivion? Even the “damn” that came back to 
him from the depths of the dome sounded foreign 
and inexpressive. 

A sheeted figure lay on the floor. “It takes a 
-dead man to run this place,” exclaimed Tarvin, 
discovering the body. “Hallo, you! Get up 
there!” ) 

The figure rose to its feet with grunts, cast away 
its covering, and disclosed a very sleepy native in 
a complete suit of dove-colored satin. 

sitio}? cried he. 

“Yes,” returned Tarvin, imperturbably. 

“You want to see me?”’ 

“No; I want to send a telegram, if there’s any 
electric fluid in this old tomb.” 

“Sir,” said the native, affably, “you have come 
to right shop. I am telegraph-operator and post- 
master-general of this state.” 


90 THE NAULAHKA. 


He seated himself in the decayed chair, opened 
a drawer of the table, and began to search for 
something. 

“What you looking for, young man? Lost 
your connection with Calcutta?” 

“Most gentlemen bring their own forms,” he 
said with a distant note of reproach in his bland 
manner. “But here is form. Have you got 
pencil?” 

“Oh, see here, don’t let me strain this office. 
Hadn’t you better go and he down again? Ill 
tap the message off myself. What’s your signal 
for Calcutta?” 

“You, sir, not understanding this instrument.” 

“Don’t 1? You ought to see me milk the wires - 
at election-time.”’ 

“This instrument require most judeecious hand- 
ling, sir. You write message. I send. That is 
proper division of labor. Ha, ha!” 


Tarvin wrote his message, which ran thus: 


“ Getting there. Remember Three C.’s. 
| TARVIN.” 


It was addressed to Mrs. Mutrie at the address 
she had given him in Denver. 

“Rush it,” he said, as he handed it back over 
the table to the smiling image. 

“All right; no fear. I am here for that,” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 91 


returned the native, understanding in general 
terms from the cabalistic word that his customer 
was in haste. 

“Will the thing ever get there?” drawled Tarvin, 
as he leaned over the table and met the gaze of 
the satin-clothed being with an air of good com. 
radeship, which invited him to let him into the 
fraud, if there was one. 

“Oh, yes; to-morrow. Denver is in the United 
States America,” said the native, looking up at 
Tarvin with childish glee in the sense of knowl- 
edge. 

“Shake!” exclaimed Tarvin, offering him a 
hairy fist. ‘“‘You’ve been well brought up.” 

He stayed half an hour fraternizing with the 
man on the foundation of this common ground of 
knowledge, and saw him work the message off on 
his instrument, his heart going out on that first 
click all the way home. In the midst of the con- 
versation the native suddenly dived into the 
cluttered drawer of the dressing-table, and drew 
forth a telegram’ covered with dust, which he 
offered to Tarvin’s scrutiny. 

“You knowing any new Englishman coming to 
Rhatore name Turpin?” he asked. 

Tarvin stared at the address a moment, and then 
tore open the envelope to find, as he expected, that 
it was for him. It was from Mrs. Mutrie, con- 


92 THE NAULAHKA. 


eratulating him on his election to the Colorado 
legislature by a majority of 1518 over Sheriff. 

Tarvin uttered an abandoned howl of joy, exe- 
cuted a war-dance on the white floor of the mosque, 
snatched the astounded operator from behind his 
table, and whirled him away into a mad waltz. 
‘Then, making a low salaam to the now wholly 
bewildered native, he rushed from the building, 
waving his cable in the air, and went capering up 
the road. 

When he was back at the rest-house again he 
retired to a bath to grapple seriously with the dust 
of the desert, while the commercial travellers with- 
out discussed his comings and goings. He plunged 
about luxuriously in a gigantic bowl of earthen- 
ware, while a brown-skinned water-carrier sluiced 
the contents of a goat-skin over his head. 

A voice in the veranda, a little louder than the 
others, said, “ He’s probably come prospecting for 
gold or boring for oil, and won’t tell.” 

Tarvin winked a wet left eye. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 93 


CHAPTER VII. 


There is pleasure in the wet, wet clay 
When the artist’s hand is potting it, 
There is pleasure in the wet, wet lay 
When the poet’s pad is blotting it, 
There is pleasure in the shine of your picture on the line 
At the Royal Acade-my ; 
But the pleasure felt in these is as chalk to cheddar cheese 
When it comes to a well-made Lie, 
To a quite unwreckable Lie, 
To amost impeccable Lie ! 
To a water-tight, fireproof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, 
steel-faced Lie ! 
Not a private hansom Lie, 
But a pair and brougham Lie ; 
Not a little place at Tooting, but a country-house with shoot- 
ing and a ringe-fence deer-park Lie! * 
Op. 3. 


A COMMON rest-house in the desert is not over- 
stocked with furniture or carpets. One table, 
two chairs, a rack on the door for clothing, and a 
list of charges, are sufficient for each room; and 
the traveller brings his own bedding. ‘Tarvin read 
the tariff with deep interest before falling asleep 
that night, and discovered that this was only in a 
distant sense a hotel, and that he was open to the 
danger of being turned out at twelve hours’ notice, 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


94 THE NAULAHKA. 


after he had inhabited his unhomely apartment for 
a day and a night. 

Before he went to bed he called. for pen and ink, 
and wrote a letter to Mrs. Mutrie on the note-paper 
of his land and improvement company. Under the 
map of Colorado, at the top, which confidently 
showed the railroad system of the State converging 
at Topaz, was the legend, “N. Tarvin, Real Estate 
and Insurance Agent.” ‘The tone of his letter was 
even more assured than the map. 

He dreamed that night that the Maharajah was 
swapping the Naulahka with him for town lots. 
His Majesty backed out just as they were con- 
cluding the deal, and demanded that Tarvin should 
throw in his own favorite mine, the “Lingering 
Lode,”’ to boot. In his dream Tarvin had kicked 
at this, and the Rajah had responded, “All right, 
my boy; no Three C.’s then,” and Tarvin had 
yielded the point, had hung the Naulahka about 
Mrs. Mutrie’s neck, and in the same breath had 
heard the speaker of the Colorado legislature declar- 
ing that since the coming of the Three C.’s he 
officially recognized Topaz as the metropolis of 
the West. Then, perceiving that he himself was 
the speaker, Tarvin began to doubt the genuineness 
of these remarks, and awoke, with aloes in his 
mouth, to find the dawn spreading over Rhatore, 
and beckoning him out to the conquests of reality. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 95 


He was confronted in the veranda by a grizzled, 
bearded, booted native soldier on a camel, who 
handed down to him a greasy little brown book, 
bearing the legend, Please write “ seen.” 

Tarvin looked at this new development from the 
heated landscape with interest, but not with an 
outward effect of surprise. He had already learned 
one secret of the East, never to be surprised at 
anything. He took the book and read, on a 
thumbed page, the announcement, “ Divine services 
conducted on Sundays in the drawing-room of the 
residency at 7.30 A.M. Strangers are cordially 
invited to attend. (Signed) L. R. Estes, American 
Presbyterian Mission.” 

“They don’t get up early for nothing in this 
country,” mused Tarvin. “‘Church at 7.30 A.M.’ 
When do they have dinner? Well, what do I do 
about this?” he asked the man aloud. ‘The trooper 
and camel looked at him together, and grunted 
as they went away. It was no concern of theirs. 

Tarvin addressed a remark of confused purport 
to the retreating figures. This was plainly not a 
country in which business could be done at red 
heat. He hungered for the moment when, with 
the necklace in his pocket and Kate by his side, 
he should again set his face westward. 

The shortest way to that was to go over to cali 
on the wissionary. He was an American, and 


96 THE NAULAHKA. 


could tell him about the Naulahka if anybody 
could; Tarvin had also a shrewd suspicion that 
he could tell him something about Kate. 

The missionary’s home, which was just without 
the city walls, was also of red sandstone, one 
story high, and as bare of vines, or any living 
thing, as the station at Rawut Junction. But 
he presently found that there were living beings 
inside the house, with warm hearts and a welcome 
for him. Mrs. Estes turned out to be that motherly 
and kindly woman, with the instinct for house- 
keeping, who would make a home of a cave. She 
had a round, smooth face, a soft skin, and quiet, 
happy eyes. She may have been forty. Her still 
untinged brown hair was brushed smoothly back; 
her effect was sedate and restful. 

Their visitor had learned that they came from 
Bangor, Maine, had founded a tie of brotherhood 
on the fact that his father had been born on a farm 
down Portland way, and had been invited to break- 
fast before he had been ten minutes in the house. 
Tarvin’s gift of sympathy was irresistible. He 
was the kind of man to whom men confide their 
heart-secrets, and the canker of their inmost lives, 
in hotel smoking-rooms. He was the repository 
of scores of tales of misery and error which he 
could do nothing to help, and of a few which he 
could help and had helped. Before breakfast wa: 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 97 


ready he had from Estes and his wife the whole pic- 
ture of their situation at Rhatore. They told him 
of their troubles with the Maharajah and with the 
Maharajah’s wives, and of the exceeding unfruit- 
fulness of their work; and then of their children, 
living in the exile of Indian children, at home. 
They explained that they meant Bangor; they 
were there with an aunt, receiving their education 
at the hands of a public school. 

“It’s five years since we saw them,” said Mrs. 
Estes, as they sat down to breakfast. “Fred was 
only six when he went, and Laura was eight. 
They are eleven and thirteen now—only think! 
We hope they haven’t forgotten us; but how can 
they remember? ‘They are only children.” 

And then she told him stories of the renewal of 
filial ties in India, after such absences, that made 
his blood run cold. 

The breakfast woke a violent homesickness in 
Tarvin. After a month at sea, two days of the 
chance railway meals between Calcutta and Rawut 
Junction, and a night at the rest-house, he was 
prepared to value the homely family meal, and the 
abundance of an American breakfast. They began 
with a watermelon, which did not help him to 
feel at home, because watermelons were next to 
an unknown luxury at Topaz, and when known, 


did not ripen in grocers’ windows in the month 
H 


98 THE NAULAHKA. 


of April. But the oatmeal brought him home 
again, and the steak and fried potatoes, the coffee 
and the hot brown pop-overs, with their beguiling 
yellow interiors, were reminders far too deep for 
tears. Mrs. Estes, enjoying his enjoyment, said 
they must have out the can of maple syrup, which 
had been sent them all the way from Bangor; and 
when the white-robed, silent-moving servant in the 
red turban came in with the waffles, she sent him 
for it. They were all very happy together over 
this, and said pleasant things about the American 
republic, while the punka sang its droning song 
over their heads. 

Tarvin had a map of Colorado in his pocket, 
of course, and when the talk, swinging to one part 
of the United States and another, worked Westward, 
he spread it out on the breakfast-table between 
the waffles and the steak, and showed them the 
position of Topaz. He explained to Estes how a 
new railway, running north and south, would make 
the town, and then he had to say affectionately what 
a wonderful town it really was, and to tell them 
about the buildings they had put up in the last 
twelve months, and how they had picked them- 
selves up after the fire and gone to building the 
next morning. ‘The fire had brought $100,000 into 
the town in insurance, he said. He exaggerated 
his exaggerations in unconscious defiance of the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 99 


hugeness of the empty landscape lying outside the 
window. He did not mean to let the East engulf 
him or Topaz. 

“We've got a young lady coming to us, I think, 
from your state,” interrupted Mrs. Estes, to whom 
all Western towns were alike. “ Wasn’t it Topaz, 
Lucien? I’m almost sure it was.” 

She rose and went to her work-basket for a letter, 
from which she confirmed her statement. “ Yes; 
Topaz. A Miss Sheriff. She comes to us from the 
Zenana Mission. Perhaps you know her?” 

Tarvin’s head bent over the map, which he was 
refolding. He answered shortly, “Yes; I know 
her. When is she likely to be here?” 

“Most any day now,” said Mrs. Estes. 

“It seems a pity,” said Tarvin, “to bring a 
young girl out here all alone, away from her 
friends —though I’m sure you’ll be friends to 
her,” he added quickly, seeking Mrs. Estes’s eyes. 

“We shall try to keep her from getting home- 
sick,” said Mrs. Estes, with the motherly note in 
her voice. “There’s Fred and Laura home in . 


’ 


Bangor, you know,” she added after a pause. 
“That will be good of you,” said ‘Tarvin, with 
more feeling than the interests of the Zenana 
Mission demanded. 
“ May I ask what your business is here?” inquired 
the missionary, as he passed his cup to his wife to 


be refilled. 


100 THE NAULAHKA. 


He had a rather formal habit of speech, and his 
words came muffled from the depths of a dense 
jungle of beard —iron-gray and unusually long. 
He had a benevolently grim face, a precise but 
friendly manner, and a good way of looking one 
in the eye which Tarvin liked. He was a man of 
decided opinions, particularly about the native 
races of India. 

“Well, I’m prospecting,” said Tarvin, in a 
leisurely tone, glancing out of the window as if 
he expected to see Kate start up out of the desert. 

“Ah! For gold?” 

“'W-e-l-l, yes; as much that as anything.” 

Estes invited him out upon the veranda to smoke 
a cigar with him; his wife brought her sewing and 
sat with them; and as they smoked Tarvin asked 
him his questions about the Naulahka. Where 
was it? What was it? he inquired boldly. But 
he found that the missionary, though an American, 
was no wiser about it than the lazy commercial 
travellers at the rest-house. He knew that it 
existed, but knew no man who had seen it save 
the Maharajah. Tarvin got at this through much 
talk about other things which interested him less; 
but he began to see an idea in the gold-mining te 
which the missionary persistently returned. Estes 
suid he meant to engage in placer-mining, of 


course ? 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 101 


”* assented Tarvin. 


“Of course, 

“But you won’t find much gold in the Amet 
River, I fancy. ‘The natives have washed it spas- 
modically for hundreds of years. There is nothing 
to be found but what little silt washes down from 
the quartz rocks of the Gungra Hills. But you 
will be undertaking work on a large scale, I 
judge?” said the missionary, looking at him 
curiously. 

“Oh, on a large scale, of course.” 

Estes added that he supposed he had thought 
of the political difficulties in his way. He would 
have to get the consent of Colonel Nolan, and 
through him the consent of the British Government, 
if he meant to do anything serious in the state. 
In fact he would have to get Colonel Nolan’s 
consent to stay in Rhatore at all. 

“Do you mean that I shall have to make it worth 
the British Government’s while to let me alone?” 

fies? 

“All right; I’ll do that too.’ 

Mrs. Estes looked up quickly at her husband 
from under her eyebrows. Woman-like, she was 


thinking. 


102 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


When a Lover hies abroad 

Looking for his Love, 
Azrael smiling sheaths his sword, 

Heaven smiles above. 
Earth and Sea 
His servants be 
And to lesser compass round, 
That his Love be sooner found.* 

Chorus from Libretto of Naulahka. 


TARVIN learned a number of things within the 
next week; and with what the West calls “adapta- 
bility,” put on, with the complete suit of white 
linen which he donned the second day, an initiation 
into the whole new system of manners, usages, and 
traditions. ‘They were not all agreeable, but they 
were all in a good cause, and he took pains to see 
that his new knowledge should not go for nothing, 
by securing an immediate presentation to the only 
man in the state of whom it was definitely 
assertable that he had seen the object of his hopes. 
Estes willingly presented him to the Maharajah. 
The missionary and he rode one morning up the 
steep slopes of the rock on which stood the palace, 


* Copyvight, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 103 


itself rock-hewn. Passing through a deep archway, 
they entered a marble-flagged court-yard, and there 
found the Maharajah, attended by one ragged and 
out-at-elbow menial, discussing the points of a 
fox-terrier, which was lying before him on the 
flags. 

Tarvin, unversed in kings, had expected a cer- 
tain amount of state from one who did not pay his 
bills, and might be reasonably expected to culti- 
vate reserve; but he was not prepared for the slov- 
enly informality of a ruler in his everyday garb, 
released from the duty of behaving with restraint 
in the presence of a viceroy, nor for the picturesque 
mixture of dirt and decoration about the court. 
The Maharajah proved a large and amiable despot, 
brown and bush-bearded, arrayed in a_ gold- 
sprigged green velvet dressing-gown, who ap- 
peared only too delighted to meet a man who had 
no connection with the Government of India, and 
who never mentioned the subject of money. 

The disproportionate smallness of his hands and 
feet showed that the ruler of Gokral Seetarun came 
of the oldest blood in Rajputana; his fathers had 
fought hard and ridden far with sword-hilts and 
stirrups that would hardly serve an English child. 
His face was bloated and sodden, and the dull eyes 
stared wearily above deep, rugged pouches. To 
Tarvin, accustomed to read the motives of Western 


104 THE NAULAHKA. 


men in their faces, there seemed to be neither fear 
nor desire in those eyes—only an _ everlasting 
weariness. It was like looking at an extinct 
volcano -—a volcano that rumbled in good English. 

Tarvin had a natural interest in dogs, and the 
keenest possible desire to ingratiate himself with 
the ruler of the state. As a king he considered him 
something of an imposture, but as a brother dog- 
fancier, and the lord of the Naulahka, he was to 
Tarvin more than a brother; that is to say, the 
brother of one’s beloved. He spoke eloquently and 
to the point. 

“Come again,” said the Maharajah, with a light 
of real interest in his eyes, as Estes, a little scan- 
dalized, drew off his guest. “Come again this 
evening after dinner. You have come from new 
countries ?” 

His Majesty, later, carried away by the evening 
draught of opium, without which no Rajput can 
talk or think, taught this irreverent stranger, who 
told him tales of white men beyond the seas, the 
royal game of pachisi. They played it far into the 
night, in the marble-flagged court-yard, surrounded 
by green shutters from behind which Tarvin could 
hear, without turning his head, the whisper of 
watching women and the rustle of silken robes. 
The palace, he saw, was all eyes. 

Next morning, at dawn, he found the King 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 105 


waiting at the head of the main street of his city 
for a certain notorious wild boar to come home. 
The game-laws of Gokral Seetarun extended to the 
streets of walled towns, and the wild pig rooted 
unconcerned at night in the alleyways. The pig 
came, and was dropped, at a hundred yards, by his 
Majesty’s new Express rifle. It was a clean shot, 
and ‘Tarvin applauded cordially. Had his Majesty 
the King ever seen a flying coin hit by a pistol- 
bullet? The weary eyes brightened with childish 
delight. The King had not seen this feat, and had 
not the coin. ‘Tarvin flung an American quarter 
skyward, and clipped it with his revolver as it fell. 
Thereupon the King begged him to do it again, 
which Tarvin, valuing his reputation, politely de- 
clined to do unless one of the court officials would 
set the example. 

The King was himself anxious to try, and Tarvin 
threw the coin for him. The bullet whizzed 
unpleasantly close to Tarvin’s ear, but the quarter 
on the grass was dented when he picked it up. The 
King liked Tarvin’s dent as well as if it had been 
his own, and Tarvin was not the man to undeceive 
him. 

The following morning the royal favor was 
completely withdrawn, and it was not until he had 
conferred with the disconsolate drummers in the 
rest-house that Tarvin learned that Sitabhai had 


106 THE NAULAHKA. 


been indulging one of her queenly rages. On 
this he transferred himself and his abundant 
capacity for interesting men offhand to Colonel 
Nolan, and made that weary white-haired man 
laugh as he had not laughed since he had been a 
subaltern over an account of the King’s revolver 
practice. ‘Tarvin shared his luncheon, and dis- 
covered from him in the course of the afternoon 
the true policy of the Government of India in 
regard to the state of Gokral Seetarun. ‘The 
Government hoped to elevate it; but as the Maha- 
rajah would not pay for the means of civilization, 
the progress was slow. Colonel Nolan’s account 
of the internal policy of the palace, given with 
official caution, was absolutely different from the 
missionary’s, which again differed entirely from the 
profane account of the men in the rest-house. 

At twilight the Maharajah pursued Tarvin with 
a mounted messenger, for the favor of the royal 
countenance was restored, and he required the 
presence of the tall man who clipped coins in the 
air, told tales, and played pachisi. ‘There was more 
than pachisi upon the board that night, and his 
Majesty the King grew pathetic, and confided to 
Tarvin a long and particular account of his own 
and the state’s embarrassments, which presented 
everything in a fourth new light. He concluded 
with an incoherent appeal to the President of the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 107 


United States, on whose illimitable powers and 
far-reaching authority Tarvin dwelt, with a patriot- 
ism extended for the moment to embrace the nation 
to which Topaz belonged. For many reasons he 
did not conceive that this was an- auspicious time 
to open negotiations for the transfer of the 
Naulahka. The Maharajah would have given 
away half his kingdom, and appealed to the Resi- 
dent in the morning. | 

The next day, and many succeeding days, 
brought to the door of the rest-house, where Tarvin 
was still staying, a procession of rainbow-clad 
Orientals, ministers of the court each one, who 
looked with contempt on the waiting commercial 
travellers, and deferentially made themselves known 
to Tarvin, whom they warned in fluent and stilted 
English against trusting anybody except them- 
selves. Each confidence wound up with, “And 
I am your true friend, sir”; and each man accused 
his fellows to the stranger of every crime against 
the state, or ill will toward the Government of 
India, that it had entered his own brain to 
conceive. 

Tarvin could only faintly conjecture what all 
this meant. It seemed to him no extraordinary 
mark of court favor to play pachisi with the King, 
and the mazes of Oriental diplomacy were dark to 
him. The ministers were equally at a loss to 


108 THE NAULAHKA. 


understand him. He had walked in upon them 
from out the sky-lne, utterly selt-possessed, utterly 
fearless, and, so far as they could see, utterly dis- 
interested; the greater reason, therefore, for sus- 
pecting that he was a veiled emissary of the Govern- , 
ment, whose plans they could not fathom. That 
he was barbarously ignorant of everything per- 
taining to the Government of India only confirmed 
their belief. It was enough for them to know that 
he went to the King in secret, was closeted with 
him for hours, and possessed, for the time being, 
the royal ear. 

These smooth-voiced, stately, mysterious strangers 
filled Tarvin with weariness and disgust, and he 
took out his revenge upon the commercial travellers, 
to whom he sold stock in his land and improvement 
company between their visits. The yellow-coated 
man, as his first friend and adviser, he allowed to 
purchase a very few shares in the “Lingering 
Lode,” on the dead quiet. It was before the days 
of the gold boom in Lower Bengal, and there was 
still faith in the land. 

These transactions took him back in fancy to 
Topaz, and made him long for some word about 
the boys at home, from whom he had absolutely 
cut himself off by this secret expedition, in which 
he was playing, necessarily alone, for the high 
stake common to them both. He would have given 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 109 


all the rupees in his pocket at any moment for a 
sight of the “Topaz Telegram,” or even for a look 
at a Denver daily. What was happening to his 
mines —to the “Mollie K.,” which was being 
worked on a lease; to the “ Mascot,’? which was the 
subject of a legal dispute; to the “Lingering 
Lode,” where they had been on the point of strik- 
ing it very rich when he left; and to his “ Garfield” 
claim, which Fibby Winks had jumped? What 
had become of the mines of all his friends, of their 
eattle-ranches, of their deals? What, in fine, had 
become of Colorado and of the United States of 
America? They might have legislated silver out 
of existence at Washington, for all he knew, and 
turned the republic into a monarchy at the old 
stand. 

His single resource from these pangs was his 
visits to the house of the missionary, where they 
talked Bangor, Maine, in the United States. To 
that house he knew that every day was bringing 
nearer the little girl he had come half-way round 
the world to keep in sight. 

In the splendor of a yellow-and-violet morning, 
ten days after his arrival, he was roused from his 
sleep by a small, shrill voice in the veranda demand- 
ing the immediate attendance of the new English- 
man. The Maharaj Kunwar, heir apparent to the 
throne of Gokral Seetarun, a wheat-colored child, 


110 THE NAULAHKA. 


aged nine, had ordered his miniature court, which 
was held quite distinct from his father’s, to equip 
his C-spring barouche, and to take him to the rest- 
house. , 

Like his jaded father, the child required amuse- 
ment. All the ‘women of the palace had told him 
that the new Englishman made the King laugh. 
The Maharaj Kunwar could speak English much 
better than his father,— French, too, for the matter 
of that,—and he was anxious to show off his 
accomplishments to a court whose applause he had 
not yet commanded. 

Tarvin obeyed the voice because it was a child’s, 
and came out to find an apparently empty barouche 
and an escort of ten gigantic troopers. 

“How do you do? Comment vous portez-vous ? 
I am the prince of this state. I am the Maharaj 
Kunwar. Some day I shall be king. Come for a 
drive with me.” 

A tiny mittened hand was extended in greeting. 
The mittens were of the crudest magenta wool, with 
green stripes at the wrist; but the child was robed 
in stiff gold brocade from head to foot, and in his 
turban was set an aigret of diamonds six inches 
high, while emeralds in a thick cluster fell over 
his eyebrow. Under all this glitter the dark onyx 
eyes looked out, and they were full of pride and 
of the loneliness of childhood. 


A STORY. OF WEST AND EAST. 111 


Tarvin obediently took his seat in the barouche. 
He was beginning to wonder whether he should 
ever wonder at anything again. 

“We will drive beyond the race-course on the 
railway road,” said the child. ‘Who are you?” he 
asked, softly laying his hand on Tarvin’s wrist. 

“Just a man, sonny.” 

The face looked very old under the turban, for 
those born to absolute power, or those who have 
never known a thwarted desire, and reared under 
the fiercest sun in the world, age even more swiftly 
than the other children of the East, who are self- 
possessed men when they should be bashful babes. 

“They say you come here to see mngese 

“That’s true,” said Tarvin. 

“When I’m king I shall a oN nobody to come 
here —not even the viceroy.” 

“That leaves: me out,’’ remarked Tarvin, laugh- 
ing. | 

“You shall come,” returned the child, measuredly, 
“if you make me laugh. Make me laugh now.” 

_ “Shall I, little fellow? Well—there was once 
—I wonder what would make a child laugh in 
this country. I’ve never seen one do it yet. 
W-h-e-w!” Tarvin gave a low, long-drawn whistle. 
* What’s that over there, my boy?” 

A little puff of dust rose very far down the road. 
It was made by swiftly moving wheels, conse- 


Le, THE NAULAHKA. 


yuently it had nothing to do with the regular traffic 
of the state. 

“That is what I came out to see,” said the 
Maharaj Kunwar. “She will make me well. My 
father, the Maharajah, said so. I am not well 


now.” 


He turned imperiously to a favorite groom 
at the back of the carriage. ‘“Soor Singh,” — he 
spoke in the vernacular, — “what is it when I be- 
come without sense? [ have forgotten the Eng- 


99 


lish.” The groom leaned forward. 

“ Heaven-born, I do not remember,” he said. 

“Now I remember,” said the child, suddenly. 
“Mrs. Estes says it is fits. What are fits?” 

Tarvin put his hand tenderly on the child’s 
shoulder, but his eyes were foliowing the dust- 
cloud. “Let us hope she’ll cure them, anyway, 
young un, whatever they are. But who is she?” 

*T do not know the name, but she will make me 
well. See! My father has sent a carriage to meet 
her.” 7 

An empty barouche was drawn up by the side 
of the road as the rickety, straining mailcart drew 
nearer, with frantic blasts upon a battered key- 
bugle. 

“It’s better than a bullock-cart, anyway,” said 
Tarvin to himself, standing up in the carriage, for 
he was beginning to choke. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 113 


“Young man, don’t you know who she is?” he 
asked huskily again. 
“She was sent,” said the Maharaj Kunwar. 


> said Tarvin in his throat, 


“Her name’s Kate,’ 
“and don’t you forget it.” Then to himself in 
a contented whisper, “ Kate!” 

The child waved his hand to his escort, who, 
dividing, lined each side of the road, with all the 
ragged bravery of irregular cavalry. The mail- 
carriage halted, and Kate, crumpled dusty, di- 
shevelled from her long journey, and red-eyed from 
lack of sleep, drew back the shutters of the 
palanquin-like carriage, and stepped dazed into 
the road. Her numbed limbs would have doubled 
under her, but Tarvin, leaping from the barouche, 
caught her to him, regardless of the escort and of 
the calm-eyed child in the golden drapery, who was 
shouting, “ Kate! Kate!” 

“Run along home, bub,” said Tarvin. “Well, 
Kate?” 

But Kate had only her tears for him and a gasping 
“You! You! Yous” 


114 aE Opie NAULAHK A> 


CHAPTER IX. 


We meet in an evil land 
That is near to the gates of Hell; 
I wait for thy command 
To serve, to speed, or withstand, 
And thou sayest I do not well ? 


Oh love, the flowers so red 
Be only blossoms of flame, 
The earth is full of the dead, 
The new-killed, restless dead. 
There is danger beneath and o’erhead, 
And I guard at thy gates in fear 
Of peril and jeopardy, 
Of words thou canst not hear, 
Of signs thou canst not see — 
And thou sayest ’tis ill that I came ? * . 
7 In Shadowland. 


TEARS stood again in Kate’s eyes as she uncoiled 
her hair before the mirror in the room Mrs. Estes 
had prepared against her coming — tears of vexation. 
It was an old story with her that the world wants 
nothing done for it, and visits with displeasure 
those who must prod up its lazy content. But in 
landing at Bombay she had supposed herself at the 
end of outside hindrances and obstacles; what was 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 115 


now to come would belong to the wholesome diff- 
culties of real work. And here was Nick! 

She had made the journey from Topaz in a long 
mood of exaltation. She was launched; it made 
her giddy and happy, lke the boy’s first taste of 
the life of men. She was free at last. No one 
could stop her. Nothing could keep her from the 
life to which she had promised herself. <A. little 
moment and she might stretch forth her hand and 
lay it fast upon her work. <A few days and she 
should stoop eye to eye above the pain that had 
called to her across seas. In her dreams piteous 
hands of women were raised in prayer to her, and 
moist, sick palms were laid in hers. The steady 
urge of the ship was too slow for her; she counted 
the throbs of the screw. Standing far in the prow, 
with wind-blown hair, straining her eyes toward 
India, her spirit went longingly forth toward those 
to whom she was going; and her life seemed to 
release itself from her, and sped far, far over the 
waves, until it-reached them and gave itself to them. 
For a moment, as she set foot on land, she trembled 
with a revulsion of feeling. She drew near her 
work; but was it for her? This old fear, which 
had gone doubtfully with her purpose from the 
beginning, she put behind her with a stern refusal 
to question there. She was for so much of her 
work as Heaven would let her do; and she went 


116 THE NAULAHKA. 


forward with a new, strong, humble impulse of 
devotion filling and uplifting her. 

It was in this mood that she stepped out of the 
coach at Rhatore into Tarvin’s arms. 

She did justice to the kindness that had brought 
him over all these leagues, but she heartily wished 
that he had not come. The existence of a man who 
loved her, and for whom she could do nothing, was 
asad and troubling fact enough fourteen thousand 
miles away. Face to face with it, alone in India, 
it enlarged itself unbearably, and thrust itself 
between her and all her hopes of bringing serious 
help to others. Love literally did not seem to her 
the most important thing in the world at that 
moment, and something else did; but that didn’t 
make Nick’s trouble unimportant, or prevent it, 
while she braided her hair, from getting in the way 
of her thoughts. On the morrow she was to enter 
upon the life which she meant should be a help to 
those whom it could reach, and here she was 
thinking of Nicholas Tarvin. 

It was because she foresaw that she would keep 
on thinking of him that she wished him away. He 
was the tourist wandering about behind the devotee 
in the cathedral at prayers; he was the other thought. 
In his person he represented and symbolized the life 
she had left behind; much worse, he represented 
a pain she could not heal. It was not with the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 117 


haunting figure of love attendant that one carried 
out large purposes. Nor was it with a divided 
mind that men conquered cities. The intent with 
which she was aflame needed all of her. She could 
not divide herself even with Nick. And yet it was 
good of him to come, and lke him. She knew 
that he had not come merely in pursuit of a selfish 
hope; it was as he had said—he couldn’t sleep 
nights, knowing what might befall her. That was 
really good of him. 

Mrs. Estes had invited Tarvin to breakfast the 
day before, when Kate was not expected; but Tarvin 
was not the man to decline an invitation at the 
last moment on that account, and he faced Kate 
across the breakfast-table next morning with a 
smile which evoked an unwilling smile from her. 
In spite of a sleepless night she was looking very 
fresh and pretty in the white muslin frock which 
had replaced her travelling-dress, and when he 
found himself alone with her after breakfast on 
the veranda (Mrs. Estes having gone to look after 
the morning affairs of a housekeeper, and Estes 
having betaken himself to his mission-school, inside 
the city walls), he began to make her his com- 
pliments upon the cool white, unknown to the 
West. But Kate stopped him. 

“Nick,” she said, facing him, “will you do some- 


thing for me?” 


118 THE NAULAHKA. 


Seeing her much in earnest, Tarvin attempted the 
parry humorous; but she broke in: 

“No; it is something I want very much, Nick. 
Will you do it for me?” 

“Is there anything I wouldn’t do for you?” he 
asked seriously. 

“I don’t know; this, perhaps. But you must 
do it.” 

“What: isiit?.” 

“Go away.” 

He shook his head. 

“But you must.” 

“Listen, Kate,” said Tarvin, thrusting his hands 
deep into the big pockets of his white coat. “I 
can’t. You don’t know the place you’ve come to. 
Ask me the same question a week hence. I won’t 
agree to go. But I’ll agree to talk it over with you 
then.” 

“T know now everything that counts,” she 
answered. “I want to do what I’ve come here 
for. I sha’n’t be able to do it if you stay. You 
understand, don’t you, Nick? Nothing can change 
that.” 

“Yes, it can.. 2 can. I'll behave.” 

“You needn’t tell me you’ll be kind. I know it. 
But even you can’t be kind enough to help hinder- 
ing me. Believe that, now, Nick, and go. It 
isn’t that I want you to go, you know.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 119 


“Oh!” observed Tarvin, with a smile 

“Well — you know what I mean,” returned Kate, 
her face unrelaxed. 

“Yes; I know. But if I’m good it won’t matter. 
I know that too. You'll see,” he said gently. 
“ Awtul journey, isn’t it?” 

“You promised me not to take it.” 

“IT didn’t take it,” returned Tarvin, smiling, 
and spreading a seat for her in the hammock, while 
he took one of the deep veranda chairs himself. 
He crossed his legs and fixed the white pith helmet 
he had lately adopted on his knee. “I came round 
the other way on purpose.” 

“What do you mean?” asked Kate, dropping 
tentatively into the hammock. 

“San Francisco and Yokohama, of course. You 
told me not to follow you.” 

“Nick!” She gathered into the single syllable 
the reproach and reproof, the liking and despair, 
with which the least and the greatest of his 
audacities alike affected her. 

Tarvin had nothing to say for once, and in the 
pause that fell she had time to reassure herself of 
her abhorrence of his presence here, and time to 
still the impulse of pride, which told her that it was 
good to be followed over half the earth’s girdle for 
love, and the impulse of admiration for that fine 
devotion — time, above all, —for this was worst and 


120 THE NAULAHKA. 


most shameful, —to scorn the sense of loneliness 
and far-awayness that came rolling in on her out of 
the desert like a cloud, and made the protecting and 
homelike presence of the man she had known in the 
other life seem for a moment sweet and desirable. 

“Come, Kate, you didn’t expect me to stay at 
home, and let you find your way out here to take 
the chances of this old sand-heap, did you? It 
would be a cold day when I let you come to Gokral 
Seetarun all by your lone, little girl — freezing cold, 
I’ve thought since I’ve been here, and seen what 
sort of camp it is.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” 

“You didn’t seem particularly interested in what 
I did, when I last saw you.” 

“Nick! I didn’t want you to come here, and I 
had to come myself.” 

“Well, you’ve come. I hope you’ll like it,” 
said he, grimly. 

“Ts it so bad?” she asked. “Not that I shall 
mind.” 

“Bad! Do you remember Mastodon?” 

Mastodon was one of those Western town, which 
have their future behind them—a city withon, % 
inhabitant, abandoned and desolate. 

“Take Mastodon for deadness, and fill it with 
ten Leadvilles for wickedness, — Leadville the first 
year, —and you’ve got a tenth of it.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. IPAS 


He went on to offer her an exposition of the 
history, politics, and society of Gokral Seetarun, 
from his own point of view, dealing with the dead 
East from the standpoint of the living West, and 
dealing with it vividly. It was a burning theme, 
and it was a happiness to him to have a listener 
who could understand his attitude, even if she 
could not entirely sympathize with it. His tone 
besought her to laugh at it with him a little, if 
only a little, and Kate consented to laugh; but she 
said it all seemed to her more mournful than amus- 
ing. 

Tarvin could agree to this readily enough, but 
he told her that he laughed to avoid weeping. It 
made him tired to see the fixedness, the apathy, 
and lifelessness of. this rich and populous world, 
which should be up and stirring by rights — trad- 
ing, organizing, inventing, building new towns, 
making the old ones keep up with the procession, 
laying new railroads, going in for fresh enterprises, 
and keeping things humming. 

“They've got resources enough,” he said. “It 
isn’t as if they had the excuse that the country’s 
poor. It’s a good country. Move the population 
of a lively Colorado town to Rhatore, set up a 
good local paper, organize a board of trade, and let 
the world know what there is here, and we’d have 
a boom in six months that would shake the empire. 


122 THE NAULAHKA. 


But what’s the use? They’re dead. They’re mum: 
mies. ‘They’re wooden images. There isn’t enough 
real, old-fashioned downright rustle and _ razzle- 
dazzle and ‘git up and git’ in Gokral Seetarun to 
run a milk-cart.”’ 

“Yes, yes;”’ she murmured, half to herself, with 
illumined eyes. “It’s for that I’ve come.” 

“Hows thatr« 


“Because they are not like us,” 


she answered, 
turning her lustrous face on him. “If they were 
clever, if they were wise, what could we do for 
them? It is because they are lost, stumbling, 
foolish creatures that they need us.” She heaved 
a deep sigh. “It is good to be here.” | 


> said Tarvin. 


“It’s good to have you,’ 

She started. 

“Don’t say such things any more, please, Nick,” 
she said. 

“Oh, well!” he groaned. 

“But it’s this way, Nick,” she said earnestly, 
but kindly. “I don’t belong to such things any 
more —not even to the possibility of them. Think 
of me as a nun. Think of me as having renounced 
all such happiness, and all other kinds of happiness 
but my work.” 

“H’m. May Ismoke?” At her nod he lighted 
a cigar. “I’m glad I’m here for the ceremony.” 

“What ceremony?” she asked. | 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 123 


Seeing you take the veil. But you won’t take 
ae 

“Why not?” 

He grumbled inarticulately over his cigar a 
moment. ‘Then he looked up. “Because I’ve got 
big wealth that says you won’t. I know you, I 
know Rhatore, and I know —”’ 

a W hatte Who?’’ 

“Myself,” he said, looking up. . 

She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘ Nick,” she 
said, leaning toward him, “you know I like you. 
I like you too well to let you go on thinking — 
You talk of not being able to sleep. How do you 
suppose I can sleep with the thought always by me 
that you are laying up a pain and disappointment 
for yourself—one that I can’t help, unless I can 
help it by begging you to go away now. I do beg 
it. Please go!” 

Tarvin pulled at his cigar musingly for some 
seconds. “Dear girl, I’m not afraid.” 

She sighed, and turned her face away toward the 


bd 


desert. “I wish you were,” she said hopelessly. 

“Fear is not for legislators,” he retorted ora- 
cularly. 

She turned back to him with a sudden motion. 
“Legislators! O Nick, are you—” 

“I’m afraid I am—by a majority of 1518.” He 
handed her the cable-despatch. 


124 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Poor father!” 

“Well, I don’t know.” 

“Oh! Well, I congratulate you, of course. 

“Thanks.” 

“But I’m not sure it will be a good thing for 
you.” 

“Yes; that’s the way it had struck me. If I 
spend my whole term out here, like as not my 
constituents won’t be in a mood to advance my 
political career when I get back.” 

“ All the more reason —” 

“No; the more reason for fixing the real thing 
first. I can make myself solid in politics any time. 
But there isn’t but one time to make myself solid 
with you, Kate. It’s here. It’s now.” He rose 
and bent over her. “Do you think I can postpone 
that, dear? I can adjourn it from day to day, and 
I do cheerfully, and you sha’n’t hear any more of it 
until you’re ready to. But you like me, Kate. I 
know that. And I—well, I like you. There isn’t 
but one end to that sort of thing.” He took her 
hand. “Good by. T1l come and take you for a 
look at the city to-morrow.” 

Kate gazed long after his retreating figure, and 
then took herself into the house, where a warm, 
healthful chat with Mrs. Estes, chiefly about the 
children at Bangor, helped her to a sane view of 
the situation she must face with the reappearance 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 125 


of Tarvin. She saw that he meant to stay, and if 
she didn’t mean to go, it was for her to find the 
brave way of adjusting the fact to her hopes. His 
perversity complicated an undertaking which she 
had never expected to find simple in itself; and it 
was finally only because she trusted all that he 
said implicitly that she was able to stay herself 
upon his promise to “behave.” Liberally inter- 
preted, this really meant much from Tarvin; per- 
haps it meant all that she need ask. 

When all was said, there remained the impulse 
to flight; but she was ashamed to find, when he 
came in the morning, that a formidable pang of 
homesickness drew her toward him, and made his 
definite and cheerful presence a welcome sight. 
Mrs. Estes had been kind. The two women had 
made friends, and found each other’s hearts with 
instant sympathy. But a home face was different, 
and perhaps Nick’s was even more different. At 
all events, she willingly let him carry out his 
plan of. showing her the city. 

In their walk about it Tarvin did not spare her 
the advantage of his ten days’ residence in Rhatore 
preceding her coming; he made himself her guide, 
and stood on rocks overlooking things, and spouted 
his second-hand history with an assurance that the 


oldest Political Resident might have envied. He 


was interested in the problems of the state, if not 


126 THE NAULAHKA. 


responsible for their solution. Was he not a mem- 
ber of a governing body? His ceaseless and fruit- 
ful curiosity about all new things had furnished 
him, in ten days. with much learning about 
Rhatore and Gokral Seetarun, enabling him to show 
to Kate, with eyes scarcely less fresh than her own, 
the wonders of the narrow, sand-choked streets, 
where the footfalls of camels and men alike fell 
dead. They lingered by the royal menagerie of 
starved tigers, and the cages of the two tame 
hunting-leopards, hooded like hawks, that slept, 
and yawned, and scratched on their two bedsteads 
by the main gate of the city; and he showed her 
the ponderous door of the great gate itself, studded 
with foot-long spikes against the attacks of that 
living battering-ram, the elephant. He led her 
through the long lines of dark shops planted in and 
among the ruins of palaces, whose builders had 
been long since forgotten, and about the straggling 
barracks, past knots of fantastically attired soldiers, 
who hung their day’s marketing from the muzzle 
of the Brown Bess or flint-lock; and then he showed 
her the mausoleum of the kings of Gokral Seetarun, _ 
under the shadow of the great temple’ where the 
children of the sun and moon went to worship, and 
where the smooth, black stone bull glared across 
the main square at the cheap bronze statue of 
Colonel Nolan’s predecessor —an offensively ener- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Py 


getic and very plain Yorkshireman. Lastly, they 
found beyond the walls the clamoring caravansary 
_of traders by the gateway of the Three Gods, whence 
the caravans of camels filed out with their burdens 
of glistening vock-salt for the railroad, and where 
by day and by night cloaked and jawbound riders 
of the desert, speaking a tongue that none could 
understand, rode in from God knows what fastness 
beyond the white hillocks of Jeysulmir. 

As they went along, Tarvin asked her about 
Topaz. How had she left it? How was the dear 
old town looking? Kate said she had left it only 
three days after his departure. 

“Three days! Three days is a long time in the 
life of a growing town.” 

Kate smiled. “I didn’t see any changes,” she 
said. 

“No? Peters was talking about breaking ground 
for his new brick saloon on G street the day after 
I left; Parsons was getting in a new dynamo for 
the city’s electric-light plant; they were just get- 
ting to work on the grading of Massachusetts 
Avenue, and they had planted the first tree in my 
twenty-acre plot. Kearney, the druggist, was put- 
ting in a plate-glass window, and I shouldn’t 
wonder if Maxim had got his new post-office boxes 
from Meriden before you left.- Didn’t you notice?” 

Kate shook her head. “I was thinking of some- 
thing else just then.” 


128 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Pshaw! Id like to know. But no matter. I 
suppose it 7s asking too much to expect a woman 
to play her own hand, and keep the run of im- 
provements in the town,” he mused. ‘“ Women 
aren’t built that way. And yet I used to run a 
political canvass and a business or two, and some- 
thing else in that town.” He glanced humorously 
at Kate, who lifted a warning hand. “Forbidden 
subject? All right. I will be good. But they 
had to get up early in the morning to do anything 
to it without letting me into it. What did your 
father and mother say at the last?” 

“Don’t speak of that,” begged Kate. 

SW ell l wonite: 

“T wake up at night, and think of mother. It’s 
dreadful. At the last I suppose I should have 
stayed behind and shirked if some one had said 
the right word—or the wrong one—as I got on 
board the train, and waved my handkerchief to 
them.” 

“Good heaven! Why didn’t I stay!” he groaned. 

“You couldn’t have said it, Nick,” she told him 
quietly. 

“You mean your father could. Of course he 
could, and if he had happened to be some one else 
he would. When I think of that I want to—!” 

“Don’t say anything against father, please,” she 
said, with a tightening of the lips. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 129 


“O dear child!” he murmured contritely, “I 
didn’t mean that. But I have to say something 
against somebody. Give me somebody to curse, 
and I’ll be quiet.” 

“Nick!” 

“Well, I’m not a block of wood,” he growled. 

“No; you are only a very foolish man.” 

Tarvin smiled. “Now you’re shouting.” 

She asked him about the Maharaj Kunwar to 
change the subject, and Tarvin told her that he 
was a little brick. But he added that the society 
of Rhatore wasn’t all as good. 

“You ought to see Sitabhai!” 

He went on to tell her about the Maharajah and 
the people of the palace’ with whom she would 
come in contact. They talked of the strange min- 
gling of impassiveness and childishness in the peo- 
ple, which had already impressed Kate, and spoke 
of their primitive passions and simple ideas — 
simple as the massive strength of the Orient is 
simple. 

“They aren’t what we should call cultured. 
They don’t know Ibsen a little bit, and they don’t 
go in for Tolstoi for sour apples,” said Tarvin, who 
did not read three newspapers a day at Topaz for 
nothing. “If they really knew the modern young 
woman, I suppose her life wouldn’t be worth an 


hour’s purchase. But they’ve got some rattling 
K 


130 THE NAULAHKA. 


good old-fashioned ideas, all the same —the sort | 
used to hear once upon a time at my dear old 
mother’s knee, away back in the state of Maine. 
Mother believed in marriage, you know; and that’s 
where she agreed with me and with the fine old- 
style natives of India. The venerable, ramshackle, 
tumble-down institution of matrimony is still in 
use here, you know.” 

“But I never said I.sympathized with Nora, 
Nick,” exclaimed Kate, leaping all the chasms of 
connection. 

“Well, then, that’s where you are solid with 
the Indian Empire. The ‘Doll’s House’ glanced 
right off this blessed old-timey country. You 
wouldn’t know where it had been hit.” 

“But I don’t agree with all your ideas either,” 
she felt bound to add. 

“T ean think of one,” retorted Tarvin, with a 
shrewd smile. “But Ill convert you to my views 
there.” 

Kate stopped short in the street along which they 
were walking. “I trusted you, Nick!” she said 
reproachfully. 

He stopped, and gazed ruefully at her for a 
moment. “QO Lord!” he groaned. “TI trusted my- 
self! But [I’m always thinking of it. What can 
you expect? But I tell you what, Kate, this shall 
be the end—last, final, ultimate. I’m done. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. TS 


From this out I’m a reformed man.. I don’t prom- 
ise not to think, and I’ll have to go on feeling, 
just the same, but I’ll be quiet. Shake on it.” He 
offered his hand, and Kate took it. 

They walked on for some moments in silence 
until Tarvin said mournfully, “You didn’t see 
Heckler just before you came away, did you?” 

She shook her head. 

“No; Jim and you never did get along much 
together. But I wish I knew what he’s thinking 
about me. Didn’t hear any rumor, any report, 
going around about what had become of me, I sup- 
pose?” 

“ They thought in town that you had gone to 
San Francisco to see some of the Western directors 
of the Colorado and California Central, I think. 
They thought that because the conductor of your 
train brought back word that you said you were 
going to Alaska, and they didn’t believe that. I 
wish you had a better reputation for truth-telling at 
LopazesNiek.”’ 

“So do I, Kate; so do I,” exclaimed Tarvin 
heartily. “But if I had, how would I ever get 
the right thing believed? ‘That’s just what I 
wanted them to think —that I was looking after 
their interests. But where would I be if I had 
sent that story back? They would have had me 
working a land-grab in Chile hefore night. That 


132 THE NAULAHKA. 


yeminds me —don’t mention that I’m here in writ- 
ing home, please. Perhaps they’ll figure that out, 
too, by the rule of contraries, if I give them the 
chance. But I don’t want to give them the chance.” 

“I’m not likely to mention it,” said Kate, 
flushing. 

A moment later she recurred tothe subject of 
her mother. In the yearning for home that came 
upon her anew in the midst of all the strangeness 
through which Tarvin was taking her, the thought 
of her mother, patient, alone, looking for some 
word from her, hurt her as if for the first time. 
The memory was for the moment intolerable to 
her; but when Tarvin asked her why she had come 
at all if she felt that way, she answered with the 
courage of better moments: “Why do men go to 
war?” ) 

Kate saw little of Tarvin during the next few 
days. Mrs. Estes made her known at the palace, 
and she had plenty to occupy her mind and heart. 
There she stepped bewilderedly into a land where 
it was always twilight—a labyrinth of passages, 
court-yards, stairs, and hidden ways, all overflow- 
ing with veiled women, who peered at her and 
laughed behind her back, or childishly examined 
her dress, her helmet, and her gloves. It seemed 
impossible that she should ever know the smallest 
part of the vast warren, or distinguish one pale 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 133 


face from another in the gloom, as the women led 
her through long lines of lonely chambers where 
the wind sighed alone under the glittering ceilings, 
to hanging gardens two hundred feet above the 
level of the ground, but still jealously guarded by 
high walls, and down again, by interminable stair- 
ways, from the glare and the blue of the flat roofs 
to silent subterranean chambers hewn against the 
heat of the summer sixty feet into the heart of the 
living rock. At every step she found women and 
children, and yet more women and children. The 
palace was reported to hold within its walls four 
thousand living, and no man knew how many 
buried, dead. 

There were many women, —how many she did 
not know, — worked upon by intrigues she could 
not comprehend, who refused her ministrations 
absolutely. They were not ill, they said, and the 
touch of the white woman meant pollution. Others 
there were who thrust. their children before her 
and bade her bring color and strength back to these 
pale buds born in the darkness; and terrible, fierce- 
eyed girls who leaped upon her out of the dark, 
overwhelming her with passionate complaints that 
she did not and dared not. understand. Monstrous 
and obscene pictures glared at her from the walls 
of the little rooms, and the images of shameless 
gods mocked her from their greasy niches above 


134 THE NAULAHKA. 


the doorways. The heat and the smell of cooking 
faint fumes of incense, and the indescribable taint 
of overcrowded humanity, caught her by the throat 
But what she heard and what she guessed sickened 
her more than any visible horror. Plainly it was, 
one thing to be stirred to generous action by a 
vivid recital of the state of the women of India, 
another to face the unutterable fact in the isolation 
of the women’s apartments of the palace of Rhatore. 

Tarvin meanwhile was going about spying out 
the land on a system which he had contrived for 
himself. It was conducted on the principle of 
exhaustion of the possibilities in the order of their 
importance — every movement which he made hay- 
ing the directest, though not always the most 
obvious, relation to the Naulahka. 

He was free to come and go through the royal 
gardens, where innumerable and very seldom paid 
gardeners fought with water-skin and well-wheel 
against the destroying heat of the desert. He was 
welcomed in the Maharajah’s stables, where eight 
hundred horses were littered down nightly, and 
was allowed to watch them go out for their morn- 
ing exercise, four hundred at a time, in a whirl- 
wind of dust. In the outer courts of the palace 
it was open to him to come and go as he chose — 
to watch the toilets of the elephants when the 
Maharajah went out in state, to laugh with the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 136 


quarter-guard, and to unearth dragon-headed, snake- 
throated pieces of artillery, invented by native 
artificers, who, here in the East, had dreamed of 
the mtrailleuse. But Kate could go where he was 
forbidden to venture. He knew the life of a white 
woman to be as safe in Rhatore as in Topaz; but 
on the first day she disappeared, untroubled and 
unquestioning, behind the darkness of the veiled 
door leading to the apartments of the women of 
the palace, he found his hand going instinctively 
to the butt of his revolver. | 
The Maharajah was an excellent friend, and no 
bad hand at pachisi; but as Tarvin sat opposite 
him, half an hour later, he reflected that he should 
not recommend the Maharajah’s life for insurance 
if anything happened to his love while she re- 
mained in those mysterious chambers from which 
the only sign that came to the outer world was a 
ceaseless whispering and rustling. When Kate 
came out, the little Maharaj Kunwar clinging to 
her hand, her face was white and drawn, and her 
eyes full of indignant tears. She had seen. 
Tarvin hastened to her side, but she put him 
from her with the imperious gesture that women 
know in deep moments, and fled to Mrs. Estes. 
Tarvin felt himself for the moment rudely thrust 
out of her life. The Maharaj Kunwar found him 


that evening pacing up and down the veranda of 


136 THE NAULAHKA. 


the rest-house, almost sorry that he had not shot 
the Maharajah for bringing that look into Kate’s 
eyes. With deep-drawn breath he thanked his 
God that he was there to watch and defend, and, 
if need were, to carry off, at the last, by force. 
With a shudder he fancied her here alone, save 
for the distant care of Mrs. Estes. 

“T have brought this for Kate,” said the child, 
descending from his carriage cautiously, with a 
parcel that filled both his arms. “Come with me 
there.” 

Nothing loath, Tarvin came, and they drove over 
to the house of the missionary. 

“All the people in my palace,” said the child 
as they went, “say that she’s your Kate.” 

“T’m glad they know that much,” muttered 
Tarvin to himself, savagely. “What’s this you 
have got for her?” he asked the Maharaj aloud, 
laying his hand on the parcel. 

“It is from my mother, the Queen—the real 
Queen, you know, because I am the Prince. There 
is a message, too, that I must not tell.” He began 
tc whisper, childlike, to himself, to keep the mes- 
sage in mind. 

Kate was in the veranda when they arrived, and 
her face brightened a little at sight of the child. 

“Tell my guard to stand back out of the garden. 


Go, and wait in the road.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. i 


The carriage and troopers withdrew. The child, 
still holding Tarvin’s hand, held out the parcel 
to Kate. 

“It is from my mother,” he said. “You have 
seen her. This man need not go. He is’’—he 
hesitated a little—“of your heart, is he not? 
Your speech is his speech.” 

Kate flushed, but did not attempt to set the 
child right. What could she say? 

“And I am to tell this,” he continued, “first 
before everything, till you quite understand.” He 
spoke hesitatingly, translating out of his own verna- 
cular as he went on, and drawing himself to his 
full height, as he cleared the cluster of emeralds 
from his brow. “My mother, the Queen,— the 
real Queen,—says, ‘I was three months at this 
work. It is for you, because I have seen your 
face. That which has been made may be unravelled 
against our will, and a gypsy’s hands are always 
picking. For the love of the gods look to it that 
a gypsy unravels nothing that I have made, for it 
is my life and soul to me. Protect this work of 
mine that comes from me—a cloth nine years 
upon the loom.’ I know more English than my 
mother,” said the child, dropping into his ordinary 
speech. : 

Kate opened the parcel, and unrolled a crude 
yellow and black comforter, with a violent crimson 


138 THE NAULAHKA. 


fringe, clumsily knitted. With such labors the 
queens of Gokral Seetarun were wont to beguile 
their leisure. 

“That is all,” said the child. But he seemed 
unwilling to go. There was a lump in Kate’s 
throat, as she handled the pitiful gift. Without 
warning the child, never loosening for a moment 
his grip on Tarvin’s hand, began to repeat the 
message word by word, his little fingers tighten- 
ing on Tarvin’s fist as he went on. 

“Say I am very grateful indeed,” said Kate, a 
little puzzled, and not too sure of her voice. 

“That was not the answer,” said the child; and 
he looked appealingly at his tall friend, the new 
Englishman. 

The idle talk of the commercial travellers in the 
veranda of the rest-house flashed through Tarvin’s 
mind. He took a quick pace forward, and laid 
his hand on Kate’s shoulder, whispering huskily: 

“Can’t you see what it means? It’s the boy, 
—the cloth nine years on the loom.” 

“But what can I do?” cried Kate, bewildered. 

“Look after him. Keep on looking after him. 
You are quick enough in most things. Sitabhai 
wants his life. See that she doesn’t get it.” 

Kate began to understand a little. Everything 
was possible in that awful palace, even child- 
murder. She had already guessed the hate that 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 139 


lives between childless and mother queens. The 
Maharaj Kunwar stood motionless in the twiligks, 
twinkling in his jewelled robes. 

“Shall I say it again?” he asked. 

“No, no, no, child! No!” she cried, flinging 
herself on her knees before him, and snatching his 
little figure to her breast, with a sudden access of 
tenderness and pity. “O Nick! what shall we do 
in this horrible country?” She began to ery. 

“Ah!” said the Maharaj, utterly unmoved, “I was 
to go when I saw that you cried.” He lifted up 
his voice for the carriage and troopers, and departed, 
leaving the shabby comforter on the floor. 

Kate was sobbing in the half darkness. Neither 
Mrs. Estes nor her husband was within just then. 
That little “we” of hers went through Tarvin with 
a sweet and tingling ecstasy. He stooped and 
took her in his arms, and for that which followed 
Kate did not rebuke him. 

“We'll pull through together, little girl,” he 
whispered to the shaken head on his shoulder. 


140 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER X. 


Ye know the Hundred Danger Time when gay with paint and 
flowers, 

Your household gods are bribed to help the bitter, helpless 
hours ; — 

Ye know the worn and rotten mat whereon your daughter lies, 

Ye know the Sootak-room unclean, the cell wherein she dies. 


Dies with the babble in her ear of midwife’s muttered charm, 
Dies, spite young life that strains to stay, the suckling on her 
arm — 
Dies in the four-fold heated room, parched by the Birth-Fire’s 
breath, 
Foredoomed, ye say, lest anguish lack, to haunt her home in death.* 
A Song of the Women: 


DEAR Frienp: That was very unkind of you, and you 
have made my life harder. I know I was weak. The 
child upset me. But I must do what I came for, and I 
want you to strengthen me, Nick, not hinder me. Don’t 
come for a few days, please. I need all I am or hope to 
be for the work I see opening here. I think I can really 
do some good. Let me, please. — KATE. 


Tarvin read fifty different meanings into this 
letter, received the following morning, and read 
them out again. At the end of his conjectures 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 141 


he could be sure only of one thing —that in spite 
of that moment’s weakness, Kate was fixed upon 
her path. He could not yet prevail against her 
steadfast gentleness, and perhaps it would be better 
not to try. Talks in the veranda, and _ sentinel- 
hke prowlings about her path when she went to 
the palace, were pleasant enough, but he had not 
come to Rhatore to tell her that he loved her. 
Topaz, in whose future the other half of his heart 
was bound up, knew that secret long ago, and— 
Topaz was waiting for the coming of the Three 
C.’s, even as Nick was waiting on Kate’s comings 
and goings. ‘The girl was unhappy, overstrained, 
and despairing, but since — he thanked God always 
—he was at hand to guard her from the absolute 
shock of evil fate. she might well be left for the 
moment to Mrs. Estes’s comfort and sympathy. 
She had already accomplished something in the 
guarded courts of the women’s quarters, for the 
Maharaj Kunwar’s mother had intrusted her only 
son’s life to her care (who could help loving and 
trusting Kate?); but for his own part, what had 
he done for Topaz beyond — he looked toward the 
city —playing pachisi with the Maharajah? The 
low morning sun flung the shadow of the rest- 
house before him. The commercial travellers came 
out one by one, gazed at the walled bulk of Rhatore, 
and cursed it. Tarvin mounted his horse, of which 


142 THE NAULAHKA. 


much more hereafter, and ambled toward the city 
to pay his respects to the Maharajah. It was 
through him, if through any one, that he must 
possess himself of the Naulahka; he had been anx- 
iously studying him, and shrewdly measuring the 
situation, and he now believed that he had formed 
a plan through which he might hope to make him- 
self solid with the Maharajah—a plan which, 
whether it brought him the Naulahka or not, 
would at least allow him the privilege of staying 
at Rhatore. ‘This privilege certain broad hints of 
Colonel Nolan’s had seemed to Tarvin of late 
plainly to threaten, and it had become clear to him 
that he must at once acquire a practical and pub- 
lishable object for his visit, if he had to rip up 
the entire state to find it. To stay, he must do 
something in particular. What he had found to 
do was particular enough; it should be done forth- 
with, and it should bring him first the Naulahka, 
and then —if he was at all the man he took him- 
self for — Kate! 

As he approached the gates he saw Kate, in a 
brown habit, riding with Mrs. Estes out of the 
missionary’s garden. | 

“You needn’t be afraid, dear. I sha’n’t bother 
you,” he said to himself, smiling at the dust-cloud 
rising behind her, as he slackened his pace. “But 
i wonder what’s taking you out so early.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 143 


The misery within the palace walls which had 
sent her half weeping to Mrs. Estes represented 
only a phase of the work for which Kate had come. 
If the wretchedness was so great under the shadow 
of the throne, what must the common folk endure? 
Kate was on her way to the hospital. 

“There is only one native doctor at the hospi- 
tal,” Mrs. Estes was saying, as they went along, 
“and of course he’s only a native; that is to say, 
he is idle.” 

“How can any one be idle here?” her compan- 
ion cried, as the stored heat from under the city 
gates beat across their temples. 

“Every one grows idle so soon in Rhatore,” 
returned Mrs. Estes, with a little sigh, thinking 
of Lucien’s high hopes and strenuous endeavors, 
long since subdued to a mild apathy. 

Kate sat her horse with the assured seat of a 
Western girl who has learned to ride and to walk 
at the same time. Her well-borne little figure 
had advantages on horseback. The glow of resolve 
lighting her simply framed face at the moment 
lent it a spiritual beauty; and she was warmed 
by the consciousness that she drew near her purpose 
and the goal of two years’ working and dreaming. 
As they rounded a curve in the main street of the 
city, a crowd was seen waiting at the foot of a 
flight of red sandstone steps rising to the platform 


144 THE NAULAHKA. 


of a whitewashed house three stories in height, on 
which appeared the sign, “State Dispensary.” The 
letters leaned against one another, and drooped 
down over each side of the door. 

A sense of the unreality of it all came over 
Kate as she surveyed the crowd of women, clad 
in vermilion, dull-red, indigo, saffron, blue, pink. 
and turquoise garments of raw silk. Almost every 
woman held a child on her hip, and a low wailing 
cry rose up as Kate drew rein. The women clus- 
tered about her stirrup, caught at her foot, and 
thrust their babies into her arms. She took one 
little one to her breast, and hushed it tenderly; it 
was burnt and dry with fever. 

“Be careful,” said Mrs. Estes; “there is small- 
pox in the hills behind us, and these people have 
no notion of precautions.” 

Kate, listening to the ery of the women, did 
not answer. <A portly, white-bearded native, in a 
brown camel’s hair dressing-gown and. patent-leather 
boots, came out of the dispensary, thrusting the 
women right and left, and bowing profoundly. 

“You are new lady doctor?” he said. “ Hospi- 
tal is quite ready for inspection.- Stand back 
from the miss sahib!” he shouted in the vernacu- 
Jar, as Kate slipped to the ground, and the crowd 
closed about her. Mrs. Estes remained in the 
saddle, watching the scene. - 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 145 


A woman of the desert, very tall, gold-colored, 
and scarlet-lipped, threw back her face-cloth, caught 
Kate by the wrist, and made as if she would drag 
her away, crying aloud fiercely in the vernacular. 
The trouble in her eyes was not to be denied. 
Kate followed unresisting, and, as the crowd 
parted, saw a camel kneeling in the roadway. On 
its back a gaunt skeleton of a man was mutter- 
ing, and picking aimlessly at the nail-studded 
saddle. The woman drew herself up to full height, 
and, without a word, flung herself down upon the 
ground, clasping Kate’s feet. Kate stooped to raise 
her, her under lip quivering, and the doctor from 
the steps shouted cheerfully: 

“Oh, that is all right. He is confirmed luna- 
tic, her husband. She is always bringing him 
here.” 

“Have you done nothing, then?” cried Kate, 
turning on him angrily. 

“What can do? She will not leave him here 
for treatment so I may blister him.” 

“Blister him!” murmured Kate to herself, ap- 
palled, as she caught the woman’s hands and held 
them firmly. “Tell her that I say he must be left 
here,” she said aloud. The doctor conveyed the 
command. The woman took.a deep breath, and 
stared at Kate under level brows for a full half- 


minute. Then she carried Kate’s hand to the 
i 


146 THE NAULAHKA. 


man’s forehead, and sat down in the dust, veiling 
her head. 

Kate, dumb under these strange expressions of 
the workings of the Eastern mind, stared at her 
for a moment, with an impulse of the compassion 
which knows no race, before she bent and kissed 
her quietly on the forehead. 

“Carry this man up,” she said, pointing; and he 
was carried up the steps and into the hospital, his 
wife following like a dog. Once she turned and 
spoke to her sisters below, and there went up a 
little chorus of weeping and laughter. 


§ 


“She says, said the doctor, beaming, “that she 


will kill any one who is impolite to you. Also, 
she will be the nurse of your son.” 

Kate paused to say a word to Mrs. Estes, who 
was bound on an errand further into the city; then 
she mounted the steps with the doctor. 

“Now, will you see the hospital?” he asked. 
“But first let me introduce. I am Lalla Dhunpat 
Rai, Licentiate Medicine, from the Duff College. 
I was first native my province that took that 
degree. That was twenty years ago.” 

Kate looked at him wonderingly. .“ Where have 
you been since?” she asked. 

“Some time I stayed in my father’s house. Then 
I was clerk in medical stores in British India. 
But his Highness have graciously given me this 
appointment, which I hold now.” 


A STORY: OF WEST AND EAST. 147 


Kate lifted her eyebrows. This, then, was ta 
be her colleague. They passed into the hospital 
together in silence, Kate holding the skirt of her 
riding-habit clear of the accumulated grime of the 
floor. 

Six roughly made pallets, laced with hide and 
string, stood in the filthy central court-yard of the 
house, and on each cot a man, swathed in a white 
sheet, tossed and moaned and jabbered. A woman 
entered with a pot full of rancid native sweet- 
meats, and tried vainly to make one of the men 
eat of her delicacies. In the full glare of the 
sunlight stood a young man almost absolutely 
unclothed, his hands clasped behind his head, try- 
ing to outstare the sun. He began a chant, broke 
off, and hurried from bed to bed, shouting to each 
words that Kate could not understand. Then he 
returned to his place in the centre, and took up his 
interrupted song. 

“He is confirmed lunatic, also,” said the doctor. 
“T have blistered and cupped him very severely, 
but he will not go away. He is quite harmless, 
except when he does not get his opium.” 

“Surely you don’t allow the patients opium!” 
exclaimed Kate. 

“Of course I allow opium. Otherwise they 
would die. All Rajputs eat opium.” 

“And you?” asked Kate, with horror. 


148 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Once I did not—when I first came. But 
now —’” He drew a smooth-worn tin tobacco-box 
from his waist, and took from it what appeared 
to Kate a handful of opium-pills. 

Despair was going over her in successive waves. 
“Show me the women’s ward,” she said wearily. 

“Oh, they are all up-stairs and down-stairs and 
round about,” returned the doctor, casually. 

“And the maternity cases?” she asked. 

“They are in casual ward.” 

“Who attends to them?” 

“They do not hke me; but there is very clever 
woman from the outside —she comes in.” 

“Has she any training—any education?” 

“She is much esteemed in her own village,” 
said the doctor. “She is here now, if you wish 
to see.” 

“Where?’? demanded Kate. 

Dhunpat Rai, somewhat uneasy in his mind, 
made haste to lead the way up a narrow stair- 
case to a closed door, from behind which came 
the wail of a new life. 

Kate flung the door open wrathfully. In that 
particular ward of the State Hospital were the 
clay and cow-dung images of two gods, which 
the woman in charge was besprinkling with mari- 
gold buds. Every window, every orifice that might 
admit a breath of air, was closed, and the birth-fire 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 149 


blazed fiercely in one corner, its fumes nearly 
asphyxiating Kate as she entered. 

What happened between Kate and the much- 
esteemed woman will never be known. The girl 
did not emerge for half an hour. But the woman 
came out much sooner, dishevelled, and cackling 
feebly. 

After this Kate was prepared for anything, even 
for the neglected condition of the drugs in the 
dispensary, —the mortar was never cleaned, and 
every prescription carried to the patient many 
and for 





more drugs than were written for him, 
the foul, undrained, uncleaned, unlighted, and 
unventilated rooms which she entered one after 
another hopelessly. The patients were allowed to 
receive their friends as they would, and to take 
from their hands whatever misguided kindness 
offered. When death came, the mourners howled 
in chorus about the cot, and bore the naked body 
through the court-yard, amid the jeers of the luna- 
tic, to carry to the city what infection Heaven 
willed. 

There was no isolation of infectious cases dur- 
ing the progress of the disease, and children 
scourged with ophthalmia played light-heartedly 
with the children of the visitors or among diph- 
theria-beds. At one point, and one point only, 
the doctor was strong; he was highly successful 


150 THE NAULAHKA. 


in dealing with the very common trouble entered 
on the day-book as “loin-bite.” The wood-cutters 
and small traders who had occasion to travel through 
the lonely roads of the state were not infrequently 
struck down by tigers, and in these cases the 
doctor, discarding the entire English pharmacopeia, 
fell back on simples of proved repute in the neigh- 
boring villages, and wrought wonders. None the 
less, 1t was necessary to convey to him that in 
future there would be only one head of the State 
Hospital, that her orders must be obeyed with- 
out question, and that her name was Miss Kate 
Sheriff. 

The doctor, reflecting that she attended on the 
women of the court, offered no protest. He had 
been through many such periods of reform and reor- 
ganization, and knew that his own inertia and a 
smooth tongue would carry him through many 
more. He bowed and assented, allowing Kate’s 
reproaches to pass over his head, and parrying all 
questions with the statement: 

“This hospital only allowed one hundred and 
fifty rupees per mensem from state revenues. How 
can get drugs all the way from’ Calcutta for 
that?” 

“7 am paying for this order,’ 


’ said Kate, writing 


out a list of needed drugs and appliances on the 
desk in the bath-room, which was supposed to serve 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 151 


as an office; “and I shall pay for whatever else I 
think necessary.” 

“Order going through me offeecially?” sug- 
gested Dhunpat Rai, with his head on one side. 

Unwilling to raise unnecessary obstacles, Kate 
assented. With those poor creatures lying in the 
rooms about her unwatched, untended, at the mercy 
of this creature, it was not a time to argue about 
commissions. 

“Yes,” she said decidedly; “of course.” And 
the doctor, when he saw the size and scope of the 
order, felt that he could endure much at her 
hands. 

At the end of the three hours Kate came away, 
fainting with weariness, want of food, and bitter 
heartache. 


152 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER XI. 


Who speaks to the King carries his life in his hand, 
Native Proverb. 


TARVIN found the Maharajah, who had not yet 
taken his morning allowance of opium, sunk in 
the deepest depression. The man from Topaz 
gazed at him shrewdly, filled with his purpose. 

The Maharajah’s first words helped him to de- 
clare it. “ What have you come here for?” he asked. 

“To Rhatore?” inquired Tarvin, with a smile 
that embraced the whole horizon. 

“Yes; to Rhatore,” grunted the Maharajah. 
“The agent sahib says you do not belong to any 
government, and that you have come here only to 
see things and write lies about them. Why have 
you come?” 

“T have come to turn your river. There is gold 
in it,” he said steadily. 

The Rajah answered him with brevity. “Go 
and speak to the Government,” he said sulkily. 

“Tt’s your river, I guess,” returned Tarvin, 
cheerfully. 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 153 


“Mine! Nothing in the state is mine. The 
shopkeeper people are at my gates day and night. 
The agent sahib won’t let me collect taxes as my 
fathers used to do. I have no army.” 

“ That’s perfectly true,’ assented Tarvin, under 
his breath. “Il run off with it some morning.” 

“And if I had,” continued the Maharajah, “I 
have no one to fight against. I am only an old 
wolf, with all my teeth drawn. Go away!” 

They were talking in the flagged court-yard 
immediately outside that wing of the palace occu- 
pied by Sitabhai. The Maharajah was sitting in 
a broken Windsor chair, while his grooms brought 
up successive files of horses, saddled and _ bridled, 
in the hope that one of the animals might be 
chosen for his Majesty’s ride. The stale, sick air of 
the palace drifted across the marble flags before 
the morning wind, and it was not a wholesome 
smell. 

Tarvin, who had drawn rein in the court-yard 
without dismounting, flung his right leg over the 
pony’s withers, and held his peace. He had seen 
something of the effect of opium upon the Mahara- 
jah. A servant was approaching with a_ small 
brass bowl full of opium and water. The Mahara- 
jah swallowed the draught with many wry faces, 
dashed the last brown drops from his mustache 
and beard, and dropped back into the chair, star- 


154 THE NAULAHKA. 


ing with vacant eyes. In a few minutes he sprang 
to his feet, erect and smiling. 

“Are you here, Sahib?” said he.» “You are 
here, or I should not feel ready to laugh. Do you 
go riding this morning?” 

“I’m your man.” | 

“Then we will bring out the Foxhall colt. He 
will throw you.” 

“Very good,” said Tarvin, leisurely. 

“And I will ride my own Cutch mare. Let us 
get away before the agent sahib comes,” said the 
Maharajah. 

The blast of a bugle was heard without the 
court-yard, and a clatter of wheels, as the grooms 
departed to saddle the horses. 

The Maharaj Kunwar ran up the steps and 
pattered toward the Maharajah, his father, who 
picked him up in his lap, and fondled him. 

“What brings thee here, Lalji?” asked the 
Maharajah. Lalji, the Beloved, was the familiar 
name by which the Prince was known within the 
palace. 

“TIT came to exercise my guard. Father, they 
are giving me bad saddlery for my troopers from 
the state arsenal. Jeysingh’s saddle-peak is mended 
with string, and Jeysingh is the best of my sol- 
diers. Moreover, he tells me nice tales,” said the 
Maharaj Kunwar, speaking in the vernacular, 
with a friendly little nod toward Tarvin. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 155 


“Hai! Hai! Thou art like all the rest,” said 
the King. “Always some fresh demand upon the 
state. And what is it now?” 

The child joined his little hands together, and 
caught his father fearlessly by his monstrous beard, 
which, in the manner of a Rajput, was brushed up 
over his ears. “Only ten little new saddles,” said 
the child. “They are in the big saddle-rooms. I 
have seen them. But the keeper of the horses 
said that I was first to ask the King.” 

The Maharajah’s face darkened, and he swore a 
great oath by his gods. 

“'The King is a slave and a servant,” he growled 
—“the servant of the agent sahib and this woman- 
talking English Raj; but, by Indur! the King’s 
son is at least a King’s son. What right had 
Saroop Singh to stay thee from anything that thou 
desirest, Prince?” , 

“T told him,” said the Maharaj Kunwar, “that 
my father would not be pleased. But I said no 
more, because I was not very well, and thou know- 
est”’— the boy’s head drooped under the turban 
—“T am only a little child. I may have the 
saddles ?” 

Tarvin, to whom no word of this conversation 
was intelligible, sat at ease on his pony, smiling 
at his friend the Maharaj. The interview had 
begun in the dead dawn-silence of the court-yard 


156 THE NAULAHKA. 


—a silence so intense that he could hear the doves 
cooing on a tower a hundred and fifty feet above 
his head. But now all four sides of the green- 
shuttered court-yard were alive, awake, and intent 
about him. He could hear muffled breathings, the 
rustle of draperies, and the faintest possible jarring 
of shutters, cautiously opened from within. A 
heavy smell of musk and jasmine came to his nos- 
trils and filled him with uneasiness, for he knew, 
without turning his head or his eyes, that Sitabhai 
and her women were watching all that went on. 
But neither the King nor the Prince heeded. The 
Maharaj Kunwar was very full of his English les- 
sons, learned at Mrs. Estes’s knee, and the King 
was as interested as he. Lest Tarvin should fail 
to understand, the Prince began to speak in Eng- 
lish again, but very slowly and distinctly, that his 
father also might comprehend. 

“And this is a new verse,” he said, “which I 
learned only yesterday.” 

“Ts there any talk of their gods in it?” asked 
the Maharajah, suspiciously. ‘“ Remember thou art 
a Rajput.” 

“No; oh, no!” said the Prince. “It is only 
English, and I learned it very quickly.” 

“Let me hear, little Pundit. Some day thou 
wilt become a scribe, and go to the English col- 
leges, and wear a long black gown.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 157% 


The child slipped quickly back into the vernac- 
alar. “The flag of our state has five colors,” he 
said. “When I have fought for that, perhaps I 
will become an Englishman.” 

“There is no leading of armies afield any more, 
little one; but say thy verses.” 

The subdued rustle of unseen hundreds orew 
more intense. Tarvin leaned forward with his 
chin in his hand, as the Prince slid down from 
his father’s lap, put his hands behind him, and 


began, without pauses or expression: 


“ Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Framed thy fearful symmetry ? 
When thy heart began to beat, 
What dread hand made thy dread feet ? 


“There is more that I have forgotten,” he went 


on, “but the last line is: 


“ Did he who made the lamb make thee ? 


I learned it all very quickly,” and he began to 
applaud himself with both hands, while Tarvin 
followed suit. 

“IT do not understand; but itis good to know 
English. Thy friend here speaks such English 
as I never knew,” said the Maharajah in the ver 
nacular. 


158 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Aye,” rejoined the Prince; “but he speaks 
with his face and his hands alive—so; and I 
laugh before I know why. Now Colonel Nolan 
Sahib speaks like a buffalo, with his mouth shut. 
I cannot tell whether he is angry or pleased. But, 
father, what does Tarvin Sahib do here?” 

“We go for a ride together,” returned the King. 
“When we return, perhaps I will tell thee. What 
do the men about thee say of him?” 

“They say he is a man of clean heart; and he 
is always kind to me.” 

“Has he said aught to thee of me?” 

“Never in language that I could understand. 
But I do not doubt that he is a good man. See, 
he is laughing now.” 

Tarvin, who had pricked up his ears at hearing 
his own name, now resettled himself in the saddle, 
and gathered up his reins, as a hint to the King 
that it was time to be moving. 

The grooms brought up a long, switch-tailed 
English thoroughbred and a lean, mouse-colored 
mare. The Maharajah rose to his feet. 

“Go back to Saroop Singh and get the saddles, 
Prince,” said he. 

“What are you going to do to-day, little man?” 
asked Tarvin. ° 

“T shall go and get new equipment,” answered 
the child, “and then I shall come to play with the 
prime minister’s son here.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 159 


Again, like the hiss of a hidden snake, the 
rustle behind the shutters increased. Evidently 
some one there understood the child’s words. 

“Shall you see Miss Kate to-day?” 

“Not to-day. °Tis holiday for me. I do not 
go to Miss Estes to-day.” 

The King turned on Tarvin swiftly, and spoke 
under his breath. 

“Must he see that doctor lady every day? All 
my people lie to me, in the hope of winning my 
favor; even Colonel Nolan says that the child is 
very strong. Speak the truth. He is my first 
son.” 

“He is not strong,” answered Tarvin, calmly. 
“Perhaps it would be better to let him see Miss 
Sheriff this morning. You don’t lose anything by 
keeping your weather eye open, you know.” 

“T do not understand,” said the King; “but go 


> 


to the missionary’s house to-day, my son.’ 


’ answered the 


“T am to come here and play,’ 
Prince, petulantly. 

“You don’t know what Miss Sheriff’s got for 
you to play with,” said Tarvin. 

“What is it?” asked the Maharaj, sharply. 

“You’ve got a carriage and ten troopers,” replied 
Tarvin. “You’ve only got to go there and find 
out.” 
He drew a letter from his breast-pocket, glanc- 


160 THE NAULAHKA 


ing with liking at the two-cent American stamp, 
and scribbled a note to Kate on the envelope, 
which ran thus: 


Keep the little fellow with you to-day. There’s a 
wicked look about things this morning. Find some- 
thing for him to do; get up games for him; do any- 
thing, but keep him away from the palace. I got your 
note. All right. I understand. 


He called the Maharaj to him, and handed him 
the note. “Take this to Miss Kate, like a little 
man, and say I sent you,” he said. 

“My son is not an orderly,” said the King, 
surlily. 

“Your son is not very well, and I’m the first 
to speak the truth to you about him, it seems to 
me,” said Tarvin. “Gently on that colt’s mouth 


— you.” 


The Foxhall colt was dancing between 
his grooms. 

“You'll be thrown,” said the Maharaj Kunwar, 
in an ecstasy of delight. “He throws all his 
grooms.” 

At that moment a shutter in the court-yard 
clicked distinctly three times in the silence. - 

One of the grooms passed to the off side of the 
plunging colt deftly. Tarvin put his foot into 
the stirrup to spring up, when the saddle turned 


completely round. Some one let go of the horse’s 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 161 


head, and Tarvin had just time to kick his foot 
free as the animal sprang forward. 

“T’ve seen slicker ways of killing a man than 
that,” he said quietly. “Bring my friend back,”’ 
he added to one of the grooms; and when the 
Foxhall colt was under his hands again he cinched 
him up as the beast had not been girt since he 
had first felt the bit. “Now,” he said, and leaped 
into the saddle, as the King clattered out of the 
court-yard. 

The colt reared on end, landed stiffly on his 
fore feet, and lashed out. Tarvin, sitting him 
with the cowboy seat, said quietly to the child, 
who was still watching his movements, “Run 
along, Maharaj. Don’t hang around here. Let 
me see you started for Miss Kate.” 

The boy obeyed, with a regretful glance at the 
prancing horse. Then the Foxhall colt devoted 
himself to unseating his rider. He refused to quit 
the court-yard, though Tarvin argued with hin, 
first behind the saddle, and then between the indig- 
nant ears. Accustomed to grooms who slipped 
off at the first sign of rebellion, the Foxhall colt 
was wrathful. Without warning, he dashed through 
the archway, wheeled on his haunches, and bolted 
in pursuit of the Maharajah’s mare. Once in the 
open, sandy country, he felt that he had a field 


worthy of his powers. ‘Tarvin also saw his oppor- 
M 


162 THE NAULAHKA., 


tunity. The Maharajah, known in his youth as 
a hard rider among a nation of perhaps the hardest 
riders on earth, turned in his saddle and watched 
the battle with interest. 

“You ride like a Rajput,” he shouted, as Tar- 
vin flew past him. “Breathe him on a straight 
course in the open.” 

“Not till he’s learned who’s boss,” replied Tar- 
vin, and he wrenched the colt around. 

“ Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done! Well done!” 
cried the Maharajah, as the colt answered the bit. 
“Tarvin Sahib, I?ll make you colonel of my regu- 
lar cavalry.” 

“Ten million iregular devils!” said Tarvin, 
impolitely. “Come back, you brute! Back!” 

The horse’s head was bowed on his lathering 
chest under the pressure of the curb; but before 
obeying he planted his fore feet, and bucked as 
viciously as one of Tarvin’s own broncos. ‘“ Both 
feet down and chest extended,” he murmured gayly 
to himself, as the creature see-sawed up and down. 
He was in his element, and dreamed himself back 
in Topaz. 

“ Maro! Maro!” exclaimed the King. “Hit him 
hard! Hit him well!” 


“Oh, let him have his little picnic,” 


said Tar- 
vin, easily. “I like it.” 
When the colt was tired he was forced to back 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 168 


r 


for ten yards. “Now we’ll go on,” said Tarvin, 
and fell into a trot by the side of the Maharajah. 
“That river of yours is full of gold,” he said, 
after a moment’s silence, as if continuing an unin- 
terrupted conversation. 

“When I was a young man,” said the King, “I 
rode pig here. We chased them with the sword 
in the springtime. ‘That was before the English 
came. Over there, by that pile of rock, I broke 
my collar-bone.” | 

“Full of gold, Maharajah Sahib. How do you 
propose to get it out?” 

Tarvin knew something already of the King’s 
discursiveness; he did not mean to give way to 
it. 

“What do I know?” answered the King, sol- 
emnly. “Ask the agent sahib.” 

“But, look here, who does run this state, you 
or Colonel Nolan?” 


? 


“You know,” returned the Maharajah. “You 


have seen.” 


He pointed north and south. “There,” 
he said, “is one railway line; yonder is another. 
I am a goat between two wolves.” 

“Well, anyway, the country between is your 
own. Surely you .can do what you like with 
that.” 

They had ridden some two or three miles beyond 


the city, parallel with the course of the Amet 


164 THE NAULAHKA. 


River, their horses sinking fetlock-deep in the soft 
sand. The King looked along the chain of shin- 
ing pools, the white, rush-tipped hillocks of the 
desert, and the far-distant line of low granite- 
topped hills, whence the Amet sprang. It was 
not a prospect to delight the heart of a king. 

“Yes; I am lord of all this country,” he said. 
“But, look you, one fourth of my revenue is swal- 
lowed up by those who collect it; one fourth those 
black-faced camel-breeders in the sand there will 
not pay, and I must not march troops against them; 
one fourth I myself, perhaps, receive; but the peo- 
ple who should pay the other fourth do not know 
to whom it should be sent. Yes; I am a very rich 
king.” 

“Well, any way you look at it, the river ought 
to treble your income.” 

The Maharajah looked at Tarvin intently. 

“What would the Government say?” he asked. 

“T don’t quite see where the Government comes 
in. You can lay out orange-gardens and take 
canals around them.” (There was a deep-set twin- 
kle of comprehension in his Majesty’s eye.) “ Work- 
ing the river would be much easier. You’ve tried 
placer-mining here, haven’t you?” 

“There was some washing in the bed of the river 
one summer. My jails were too full of convicts, 
and I feared rebellion. But there was nothing to 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 165 


see, except those black dogs digging in the sand. 
That year I won the Poonah cup with a bay pony.” 

Tarvin brought his hand down on his thigh with 
an unguarded smack. What was the use of talk- 
ing business to this wearied man, who would pawn 
what the opium had left to him of soul for some- 
thing to see? He shifted his ground instantly. 

“Yes; that sort of mining is nothing to look 
at. What you want is a little dam up Gungra 
way.” 

“Near the hills?” 

mes. 

“No man has ever dammed the Amet,” said the 
King. “It comes out of the ground, and sinks 
back into the ground, and when the rain falls it 
is as big as the Indus.” 

“We'll have the whole bed of it laid bare batbre 


Jesaid ‘Lar 


the rains begin — bare for twelve miles, 
vin, watching the effect on his companion. 

“No man has dammed the Amet,” was the stony 
reply. 

“No man has ever tried. Give me all the labor 
I want, and J will dam the Amet.” 

“Where will the water go?” inquired the King. 

“Tl take it around another way, as you took 
the canal around the orange-garden, of course.” 

“Ah! Zhen Colonel Nolan talked to me as if 


I were a child.” 


166 (THE NAULAHKA. 


“You know why, Maharajah Sahib,” said Tar- 
vin, placidly. 

The King was frozen for a moment by this au- 
dacity. He knew that all the secrets of his 
domestic life were common talk in the mouths of 
the city, for no man can bridle three hundred 
women; but he was not prepared to find them so 
frankly hinted at by this irreverent stranger, wha 
was and was not an Englishman. . 

“Colonel Nolan will say nothing this time,” 
continued Tarvin. “Besides, it will help yom 
people.” 

“Who are also his,” said the King. 

The opium was dying out of his brain, and his 
head fell forward upon his chest. 

“Then I shall begin to-morrow,” said Tarvin. 
“It will be something to see. I must find the 
best place to dam the river, and I dare say you 
can lend me a few hundred convicts.” 

“But why have you come here at all,” asked the 
King, “to dam my rivers, and turn my state upside 
down?” 

“Because it’s good for you to laugh, Maharajah 
Sahib. You know that as well as Ido. I will 
play pachisi with you every night until you are 
tired, and I can speak the truth—a rare commo- 
dity in these parts.” 

“Did you speak truth about the Maharaj Kun- 


war? Is he indeed not well?” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 167 


“T have told you he isn’t quite strong. But 
there’s nothing the matter with him that Miss 
Sheriff can’t put right.” 

“Ts that the truth?” demanded the King. ‘“ Re- 
member, he has my throne after me.” 

“Tf I know Miss Sheriff, he’ll have that throne. 
Don’t you fret, Maharajah Sahib.” 

“You are great friend of hers?” pursued his 
companion. “You both come from one country?” 

“Yes,” assented Tarvin; “and one town.” 


b) 


“Tell me. about that town,” said the King, curi- 
ously. 

Tarvin, nothing loath, told him—told him at 
length, in detail, and with his own touches of 
verisimilitude, forgetting in the heat of admiration 
and affection that the King could understand, at | 
best, not more than one word in ten of his vigor- 
ous Western colloquialisms. Half-way through his 
rhapsody the King interrupted. | 

“Tf it was so good, why did you not stay there?” 


> 


“I came to see you,” said Tarvin, quickly. “I 
heard about you there.” 

“Then it is true, what my poets sing to me, that 
my fame is known in the four corners of the earth? 
I will fill Bussant Rao’s mouth with gold if it is 
so.” 

“You can bet your life. Would you like me to 
go away, though? Say the word!” Tarvin made 


as if to check his horse. 


169 THE NAULAHKA. 


The Maharajah remained sunk in deep thought, 
and when he spoke it was slowly and distinctly, 
that Tarvin might catch every word. “I hate all 
the English,” he said. “Their ways are not my 
ways, and they make such trouble over the killing 
of a man here and there. Your ways are not my 
ways; but you do not give so much trouble, and 
you are a friend of the doctor lady.” 

“Well, I hope I’m a friend of the Maharaj Kun- 
war’s too,” said Tarvin. 

“Are you a true friend to him?” asked the 
King, eyeing him closely. 

“'That’s all right. I’d like to see the man who 
tried to lay a hand on the little one. He’d van- 
ish, King; he’d disappear; he wouldn’t be. Id 
mop up Gokral Seetarun with him.” 

“T have seen you hit that rupee. Do it again.” 

Without thinking for a moment of the Foxhall 
colt, Tarvin drew his revolver, tossed a coin into 


the air, and fired. The coin fell beside them, 





a 
fresh one this time, — marked squarely in the cen- 
tre. The colt plunged furiously, and the Cutch 
mare curveted. There was a thunder of hoofs 
behind them. The escort, which, till now, had 
waited respectfully a quarter of a mile behind, 
were racing up at full speed, with levelled lances. 
The King laughed a little contemptuously. 

“They are thinking you have shot me,” he said. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 169 


“So they will kill you, unless I stop them. Shall 
I stop them?” 

Tarvin thrust out his under jaw with a motion 
peculiar to himself, wheeled the colt, and waited 
without answering, his empty hands folded on the 
pommel of his saddle. The troop swept down in 
-an irregular mob, each man crouching, lance in 
rest, over his saddle-bow, and the captain of the 
troop flourishing a long, straight Rajput sword. 
Tarvin felt rather than saw the lean, venomous 
lanceheads converging on the breast of the colt. 
The King drew off a few yards, and watched him 
where he stood alone in the centre of the plain, 
waiting. For that single moment, in which he 
faced death, Tarvin thought to himself that he 
preferred any customer to a maharajah. 

Suddenly his Highness shouted once, the lance- 
butts fell as though they had been smitten down, 
and the troop, opening out, whirled by on each 
side of Tarvin, each man striving as nearly as 
might be to brush the white man’s boot. 

The white man stared in front of him without 
turning his head, and the King gave a little grunt 
of approval. 

“Would you have done that for the Maharaj 
Kunwar?” he asked, wheeling his mare in again 
beside him, after a pause. 

“No,” said Tarvin, placidly. “I should have 
begun shooting long before.” 


iO THE NAULAHKA. 


“What! Fifty men?” 

“No; the captain.” 

The King shook in his saddle with laughter, 
and held up his hand. The commandant of the 
troop trotted up. 

“ Ohe, Pertab Singh-Ji, he says he would have 
shot thee.” Then, turning to Tarvin, smiling, , 
“That is my cousin.” 

The burly Rajput captain grinned from ear to 
ear, and, to T'arvin’s surprise, answered in perfect 
English: “That would do for irregular cavalry, — 
to kill the subalterns, you understand, —but we 
are drilled exclusively on English model, and I 
have my commission from the Queen. Now, in 
the German army —” 

Tarvin looked at him in blank amazement. 

“But you are not connected with the military,” 
said Pertab Singh-Ji, politely. “I have heard how 
you shot, and I saw what you were doing. But 
you must please excuse. When a shot is fired near 
his Highness it is our order always to come up.” 

He saluted, and withdrew to his troop. 

The sun was growing unpleasantly hot, and the 
King and Tarvin trotted back toward the city. — 

“How many convicts can you Jend me?” asked 
Tarvin, as they went. 

“All my jails full, if you want them,” was 
the enthusiastic answer. “By God, Sahib, I never 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 171 


saw anything like that. I would give you any- 
thing.” ? 

Tarvin took off his hat, and mopped his fore- 
head, laughing. 

“Very good, then. J’ll ask for something that 
will cost you nothing.” 

The Maharajah grunted doubtfully. People gen- 
erally demanded of him things he was not willing 
to part with. | 

“That talk is new to me, Tarvin Sahib,” said 
he. 

“You'll see I’m in earnest when I say I only 
want to look at the Naulahka. I’ve seen all your 
state diamonds and gold carriages, but I haven’t 
seen that.” 

The Maharajah trotted fifty yards without reply- 
ing.. Then: 

“Do they speak of it where you come from?” 

“Of course. All Americans know that it’s the 
biggest thing in India. It’s in all the guide- 
books,” said Tarvin, brazenly. | 

“Do the books say where it is? The English 
people are so wise.” The Maharajah stared straight 
in front of him, and almost smiled. 

“No; but they say you know, and I’d like to 
see it.” 

“You must understand, Tarvin Sahib,” — the 


Maharajah spoke meditatively, — “that this is not 





iba THE NAULAHKA. 


a state jewel, but the state jewel—the jewel of 
the state. It is a holy thing. Even I do not 
keep it, and I cannot give you any order to see 
ites: 

Tarvin’s heart sank. 

“But,” the Maharajah continued, “if I say where 
if is, you can go at your own risk, without Gov- 
ernment interfering. I have seen you are not 
afraid of risk, and I am a very grateful man.  Per- 
haps the priests will show you; perhaps they will 
not. Or perhaps you will not find the priests at 
all. Oh, I forgot; it is not in that temple that I 
was thinking of. No; it must be in the Gye- 
Mukh—the Cow’s Mouth. But there are no 
priests there, and nobody goes. Of course it is in 
the Cow’s Mouth. I thought it was in this city,” 
resumed the Maharajah. He spoke as if he were 
talking of a dropped horseshoe or a mislaid turban. 

“Oh, of course. The Cow’s Mouth,” repeated 
Tarvin, as if this also were in the guide-books. 

Chuckling with renewed animation, the King 
went on: “By God, only a very brave man would 
go to the Gye-Mukh; such a brave man as your- 
self, Tarvin Sahib,” he added, giving his compan- 
ion a shrewd look. “Ho, ho! Pertab Singh-Ji 
would not go. No; not with all his troops that 
you conquered to-day.” 

“Keep your praise until I’ve earned it, Mahara- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 173 


jah Sahib,” said Tarvin. “Wait until I’ve dammed 


y) 


that river.”” He was silent for a while, as if di- 
gesting this newest piece of information. 

“Now, you have a city like this city, I sup- 
pose?” said the Maharajah, interrogatively, point- 
ing to Rhatore. 

Tarvin had overcome in a measure his first feel- 
ing of contempt for the state of Gokral Seetarun 
and the city of Rhatore. He had begun to look 
upon them both, as was his nature in the case of 
people and things with which he dwelt, with a 
certain kindness. 

“Topaz is going to be bigger,” he explained. 

“And when you are there what is your offeecial 
position?” asked the Maharajah. 

Tarvin, without answering, drew from his breast- 
pocket the cable from Mrs. Mutrie, and handed 
it in silence to the King. Where an election was 
concerned even the sympathy of an opium-soaked 
Rajput was not indifferent to him. 

“What does it mean?” asked the King, and 
Tarvin threw up his hands in despair. 

He explained his connection with the govern- 
ment of his state, making the Colorado legislature 
appear as one of the parliaments-of America. He 
owned up to being the Hon. Nicholas Tarvin, if 
the Maharajah really wanted to give him his full 
title. 


174 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Such as the members of provincial councils that 
come here?” suggested the Maharajah, remember- 
ing the gray-headed men who visited him from time 
to time, charged with authority only little less than 
that of a viceroy. “But still you will not write 
letters to that legislature about my government?” 
queried he suspiciously, recalling again over-curi- 
ous emissaries from the British Parliament over 
seas, who sat their horses like sacks, and talked 
interminably of good government when he wished 
to go to bed. “And, above ali,” he added slowly, 
as they drew near to the palace, “you are most 
true friend of the Maharaj Kunwar? And your 
friend, the lady doctor, will make him well?” 

“That,” said Tarvin, with a sudden inspiration, 


“is what we are both here for!” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 175 


CHAPTER XII. 


This I saw when the rites were done 
And the lamps were dead and the Gods alone 
And the gray snake coiled on the altar stone — 
Ere I fled from a Fear that I could not see, 
And the Gods of the East made mouths at me.* 
In Seonee. 


WHEN he left the King’s side, Tarvin’s first 
impulse was to set the Foxhall colt into a gallop, 
and forthwith depart in search of the Naulahka. 
He mechanically drove his heels home, and _ short- 
ened his rein under the impulse of the thought; 
but the colt’s leap beneath him recalled him to his 
senses, and he restrained himself and his mount 
with the same motion. 

His familiarity with the people’s grotesque no- 
menclature left him unimpressed by the Cow’s 
Mouth as a name for a spot, but he gave some 
wonder to the question why the thing should be 
in the Cow’s Mouth. This was a matter to be 
laid before Estes. 

“These heathen,” he said to himself, “are just 
the sort to hide it away in a salt-lick, or bury it 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


176 THE NAULAHKA. 


in a hole in the ground. Yes; a hole is about 
their size. They put the state diamonds in cracker- 
boxes tied up with boot-laces. The Naulahka is 
probably hanging on a tree.” 

As he trotted toward the missionary’s house, he 
looked at the hopeless landscape with new interest, 
for any spur of the low hills, or any roof in the 
jumbled city, might contain his treasure. 

Estes, who had outlived many curiosities, and 
knew Rajputana as a prisoner knows the bricks of 
his cell, turned on Tarvin, in reply to the latter’s 
direct question, a flood of information. There were 
mouths of all kinds in India, from the Burning 
Mouth in the north, where a jet of natural gas 
was worshipped by millions as the incarnation of a 
divinity, to the Devil’s Mouth among some for- 
gotten Buddhist ruins in the furthest southern 
corner of Madras. 

There was also a Cow’s Mouth some hundreds 
of miles away, in the court-yard of a temple at 
Benares, much frequented by devotees; but as far 
as Rajputana was concerned, there was only one 
Cow’s Mouth, and that was to be found in a dead 
city. 

The missionary launched into a history of wars 
and rapine, extending over hundreds of years, all 
centring round one rock-walled city in the wilder- 
ness, which had been the pride and the glory of 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. LT 


the kings of Mewar. ‘Tarvin listened with patience 
as infinite as his weariness —ancient history had 
no charm for the man who was making his: own 
town —while Estes enlarged upon the past, and 
told stories of voluntary immolation on the pyre 
in subterranean palaces by thousands of Rajput 
women who, when the city fell before a Moham- 
medan, and their kin had died in the last charge 
of defence, cheated the conquerors of all but the 
empty glory of conquest. Estes had a taste for 
archeology, and it was a pleasure to him to speak 
of it to a fellow countryman. 

By retracing the ninety-six miles to Rawut 
Junction, Tarvin might make connection with a 
train that would carry him sixty-seven miles west- 
ward to yet another junction, where he would 
change and go south by rail for a hundred and 
seven miles; and this would bring him within four 
miles of this city, its marvellous nine-storied tower 
of glory, which he was to note carefully, its stu- 
pendous walls and desolate palaces. The journey 
would occupy at least two days. At this point 
Tarvin suggested a map, and a glance at it showed 
him that Estes proposed an elaborate circus round 
three sides of a square, whereas a spider-like line 
ran more or less directly from Rhatore to Gun- 
naur. 


“This seems shorter,” he said. 
N 


TTS, THE NAULAHKA. 


“It’s only a country road, and you have had 
some experience of roads in this state. Fifty-seven 
miles on a kutecha road in this sun would be fatal.” 

Tarvin smiled to himself. He had no particular 
dread of the sun, which, year by year, had stolen 
from his companion something of his vitality. 

“T think I'll ride, anyhow... It seems a waste 
to travel half round India to get at a thing 
across the road, though it is the custom of the 
country.” 

He asked the missionary what the Cow’s Mouth 
was like, and Estes explained archeologically, archi- 
tecturally, and philologically to such good purpose 
that Tarvin understood that it was some sort of a 
hole in the ground—an ancient, a remarkably 
ancient, hole of peculiar sanctity, but nothing more 
than a hole. 

Tarvin decided to start without an hour’s delay. 
The dam might wait until he returned. It was 
hardly likely that the King’s outburst of gener- 
osity would lead him to throw open his jails on 
the morrow. ‘Tarvin debated for a while whether 
he should tell him of the excursion he was propos- 
ing to himself, and then decided that he would 
look at the necklace first, and: open negotiations 
later. This seemed to suit the customs of the 
country. He returned to the rest-house with 
Kstes’s map in his pocket to take stock of his 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 178 


stable. Like other men of the West, he reckoned 
« horse a necessity before all other necessities, and 
had purchased one mechanically immediately after 
his arrival. It had been a comfort to him to note 
all the tricks of all the men he had ever traded 
horses with faithfully reproduced in the lean, 
swarthy Cabuli trader who had led his kicking, 
plunging horse up to the veranda one idle even- 
ing; and it had been a greater comfort to battle 
with them as he had battled in the old days. The 
result of the skirmish, fought out in broken Eng- 
lish and expressive American, was an unhandsome, 
doubtful-tempered, mouse-colored Kathiawar stall- 
ion, who had been dismissed for vice from the 
service of his Majesty, and who weakly believed 
that, having eaten pieces of the troopers of the 
Deo Li Irregular Horse, ease and idleness awaited 
him. Tarvin had undeceived him leisurely, in 
such moments as he most felt the need of doing 
something, and the Kathiawar, though never grate- 
ful, was at least civil. He had been christened 
Fibby Winks in recognition of ungentlemanly con- 
duct and a resemblance which Tarvin fancied he 
detected between the beast’s lean face and that of 
the man who had jumped his claim. 

Tarvin threw back the loin-cloth as he came 
upon Fibby drowsing in the afternoon sun behind 
the rest-house. 


180 THE NAULAHKA. 


“We're going for a little walk down-town, 
Fibby,” he said. 

The Kathiawar squealed and snapped. 

wens you always were a loafer, Fibby.” 

Fibby was saddled by his nervous native atten- 
dant, while Tarvin took a blanket from his room 
and rolled up into it an imaginative assortment 
of provisions. Fibby was to find his rations where 
Heaven pleased. Then he set out as light-heartedly 
as though he were going for a canter round the 
city. It was now about three in the afternoon. 
All’ Fibby’s boundless reserves. of ill temper and 
stubborn obstinacy Tarvin resolved should be de- 
voted, by the aid of his spurs, to covering the 
fifty-seven miles to Gunnaur in the next ten hours, 
if the road were fair. If not, he should be allowed 
another two hours. ‘The return journey would not 
require spurs. There was a moon that night, and 
Tarvin knew enough of native roads in Gokrai 
Seetarun, and rough trails elsewhere, to be certain 
that he would not be confused by cross-tracks. 

It being borne into Fibby’s mind that he was 
required to advance, not in three directions at once, 
but in one, he clicked his bit comfortably in his 
mouth, dropped his head, and began to trot stead- 
ily. Then Tarvin pulled him up, and addressed 
him tenderly. 

“Fib, my boy, we’re not out for exercise — you’l] 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 181 


fearn that before sundown. Some galoot has been 
training you to waste your time over the English 
trot. Ill be discussing other points with you in 
the course of the campaign; but we'll settle this 
now. We don’t begin with crime. Drop it, 
Iibby, and behave like a man-horse.” 

Tarvin was obliged to make further remarks on 
the same subject before Fibby returned to the easy 
native lope, which is also a common Western pace, 
tiring neither man nor beast. By this he began 
to understand that a long journey was demanded 
of him, and, lowering his tail, buckled down to 
it. 

At first he moved in a cloud of sandy dust with 
the cotton-wains and the country-carts that were 
creaking out to the far distant railroad at Gun- 
naur. As the sun began to sink, his gaunt shadow 
danced like a goblin across low-lying volcanic 
rock tufted with shrubs, and here and there an 
aloe. 

The carters unyoked their cattle on the roadside, 
and prepared to eat their evening meal by the light 
of dull-red fires. Fibby cocked one ear wistfully 
toward the flames, but held on through the gather-. 
ing shadows, and Tarvin smelt the acrid juice of 
bruised camel’s-thorn beneath his horse’s hoofs. 
The moon rose in splendor behind him, and, 


following his lurching shadow, he overtook a naked 


182 THE NAULAHKA. 


man who bore over his shoulder a stick loaded 
with jingling bells, and fled panting and perspiring 
from one who followed him armed with a naked 
sword. ‘This was the mail-carrier and his escort run- 
ning to Gunnaur. The jingling died away on the 
dead air, and Fibby was ambling between intermin- 
able lines of thorn-bushes that threw mad arms to the 
stars, and cast shadows as solid as themselves across 
the road. Some beast of the night plunged through 
the thicket alongside, and Fibby snorted in panic. 
Then a porcupine crossed under his nose with a 
rustle of quills, and left an evil stench to poison 
the stillness for a moment. <A _ point of light 
gleamed ahead, where a bullock-cart had broken 
down, and the drivers were sleeping peacefully till 
daylight should show the injury. Here Fibby 
stopped, and Tarvin, through the magic of a rupee, 
representing fortune to the rudely awakened sleep- 
ers, procured food and a little water for him, eased 
the girths, and made as much of him as he was 
disposed to permit. On starting again, Fibby found 
his second wind, and with it there woke the spirit 
of daring and adventure inherited from his ances- 
tors, who were accustomed to take their masters 
thirty leagues’ in a day for the sacking of a town, 
to sleep by a lance driven into the earth as a 
picket, and to return whence they had come before 
the ashes of the houses had lost heat. So Fibby 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST, 183 


lifted his tail valiantly, neighed, and began to 
move. | 

The road descended for miles, crossing the dry 
‘beds of many water-courses and once a broad river, 
where Fibby stopped for another drink, and would 
have lain down to roll in a melon-bed but that 
his rider spurred him on up the slope. The coun- 
try grew more fertile at every mile, and rolled in 
broader waves. Under the lght of the setting 
moon the fields showed silver-white with the opium- 
poppy, or dark with sugar-cane. 

Poppy and sugar ceased together, as Fibby topped 
a long, slow ascent, and with distended nostrils 
snuffed for the wind of the morning. He knew 
that the day would bring him rest. Tavin peered 
forward where the white line of the road disap- 
peared in the gloom of velvety scrub. He com- 
manded a vast level plain flanked by hills of soft 
outline —a plain that in the dim light seemed as 
level as the sea. Like the sea, too, it bore on its 
breast a ship, ike a gigantic monitor with a sharp 
bow, cutting her way from north to south; such a 
ship as man never yet has seen—two miles long, 
with three or four hundred feet free-board, lonely, 
silent, mastless, without lights, a derelict of the 
earth. 

“We are nearly there, Fib, my boy,” said Tar- 


vin, drawing rein, and scanning the monstrous 


~ 


184 THE NAULAHKA., 


thing by the starlight. “We’ll get as close as 
we can, and then wait for the daylight before going 
aboard.” 

They descended the slope, which was covered © 
with sharp stones and sleeping goats. Then the 
road turned sharply to the left, and began to run 
parallel to the ship. Tarvin urged Fibby into a 
more direct path, and the good horse blundered 
piteously across the scrub-covered ground, cut up 
and channelled by the rains into a network of six- 
foot ravines and gulches. 

Here he gave out with a despairing grunt. Tar- 
vin took pity on him, and, fastening him to a 
tree, bade him think of his sins till breakfast-time, 
and dropped from his back into a dry and dusty 
water-hole. Ten steps further, and the scrub was 
all about him, whipping him across the brows, 
hooking thorns into his jacket, and looping roots 
in front of his knees as he pushed on up an ever- 
steepening incline. 

At last Tarvin was crawling on his hands and 
knees, grimed from head to foot, and hardly to be 
distinguished from the wild pigs that passed like — 
slate-colored shadows through the tangle of the 
thickets on their way to their rest. Too absorbed 
to hear them grunt, he pulled and screwed himself 
up the slope, tugging at the roots as though he 
would rend the Naulahka from the bowels of the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 185 


earth, and swearing piously at every step. When 
he stopped to wipe the sweat from his face, he 
found, more by touch than by eye, that he knelt 
at the foot of a wall that ran up into the stars. 
Fibby, from the tangle below, was neighing dole- 
fully. } 

“You're not hurt, Fibby,” he gasped, spitting 
out some fragments of dry grass; “you aren’t on 
in this scene. Nobody’s asking you to fly to- 
night,” he said, looking hopelessly up at the wall 
again, and whistling softly in response to an owl’s 
hooting overhead. 

He began to pick his way between the foot of 
the wall and the scrub that grew up to it, press- 
ing one hand against the huge cut stones, and 
holding the other before his face. A fig-seed had 
found foothold between two of the gigantic slabs, 
and, undisturbed through the centuries, had grown 
into an arrogant, gnarled tree, that writhed between 
the fissures and heaved the stonework apart. Tar- 
vin considered for a while whether he could climb 
into the crook of the lowest branch, then moved 
on a few steps, and found the wall rent from top 
to bottom through the twenty feet of its thick- 
ness, allowing passage for the head of an army. 

“Like them, exactly like them!” he mused. “I 
might have expected it. To build a wall sixty 
feet high, and put an eighty-foot hole in it! The 


186 THE NAULAHKA. 


Naulahka must. be lying out on a bush, or a child’s 
playing with it, and—I can’t get it!” 

He plunged through the gap, and found himself 
amid scattered pillars, slabs of stone, broken lin- 
tels, and tumbled tombs, and heard a low, thick 
hiss almost under his riding-boots. No man born 
of woman needs to be instructed in the voice of 
the serpent. 

Tarvin jumped, and stayed still. Fibby’s neigh 
came faintly now. The dawn wind blew through 
the gap in the wall, and Tarvin wiped his fore- 
head with a deep sigh of relief. He would do 
no more till the light came. This was the hour 
to eat and drink; also to stand very still, because 
of that voice from the ground. 

He pulled food and a flask from his pocket, and, 
staring before him in every direction, ate hungrily. 
The loom of the night lifted a little, and he 
could see the outline of some great building a few 
yards away. Beyond this were other shadows, 
faint as the visions in a dream—the shadows of 
yet more temples and lines of houses; the wind, 
blowing among them, brought back a rustle of 
tossing hedges. 

The shadows grew more distinct: he could: see 
that he was standing with his face to some decayed 
tomb. Then his jaw fell, for, without warning 
or presage, the red dawn shot up behind him, and 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 187 


there leaped out of the night the city of the dead. 
Tall-built, sharp-domed palaces, flushing to the 
color of blood, revealed the horror of their empti- 
ness, and glared at the day that pierced them 
through and through. 

The wind passed singing down the empty streets, 
and, finding none to answer, returned, chasing 
before it a muttering cloud of dust, which pres- 
ently whirled itself into a little cyclone-funnel, 
and laid down with a sigh. 

A screen of fretted marble lay on the dry grass, 
where it had fallen from some window above, and 
a gecko crawled over it to sun himself. Already 
the dawn flush had passed. The hot light was 
everywhere, and a kite had poised himself in the 
parched blue sky. ‘The day, new-born, might have 
been as old as the city. It seemed to Tarvin that 
he and it were standing still to hear the centuries 
race by on the wings of the purposeless dust. 

As he took his first step into the streets, a pea- 
cock stepped from the threshold of a lofty red 
house, and spread his tail in the splendor of the 
sun. ‘Tarvin halted, and with perfect gravity took 
off his hat to the royal bird, where it blazed 
against the sculptures on the wall, the sole living 
thing in sight. 

The silence of the place and the insolent naked- 
ness of the empty ways lay on him like a dead 


188 THE NAULAHKA. 


weight. For a long time he did not care toa 
whistle, but rambled aimlessly from one wall to 
another, looking at the gigantic reservoirs, dry 
and neglected, the hollow guard-houses that studded 
the battlements, the time-riven arches that spanned 
the streets, and, above all, the carven tower -with 
a shattered roof that sprang a hundred and _ fifty 
feet into the air, for a sign to the country-side 
that the royal city of Gunnaur was not dead, but 
would one day hum with men. 

It was from this tower, incrusted with figures 
in high relief of beast and man, that Tarvin, after 
a heavy climb, looked out on the vast sleeping 
land in the midst of which the dead city lay. He 
saw the road by which he had come in the night, 
dipping and reappearing again over thirty miles 
of country, saw the white poppy-fields, the dull- 
brown scrub, and the unending plain to the north- 
ward, cut by the shining line of the rail. From 
his aery he peered forth as a man peers from a 
crow’s-nest at sea; for, once down there below 
in the city, all view was cut off by the battle- 
ments that rose like bulwarks. On the side nearest 
to the railroad, sloping causeways, paved with 
stone, ran down to the plain under many gates, 
as the gangway of a ship when it is let down, 
and through the gaps in the walls —time and the 
trees had torn their way to and fro—there was 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 189 


nothing to be seen except the horizon, which might 
have been the deep sea. 

He thought of Fibby waiting in the scrub for 
his breakfast, and made haste to descend to the 
streets again. Remembering the essentials of his 
talk with Estes as to the position of the Cow’s 
Mouth, he passed up a side-lane, disturbing the 
squirrels and monkeys that had taken up their 
quarters in the cool dark of the rows of empty 
houses. The last house ended in a heap of ruins 
among a tangle of mimosa and tall grass, through 
which ran a narrow foot-track. 

Tarvin marked the house as the first actual ruin 
he had seen. His complaint against all the others, 
the temples and the palaces, was that they were 
not ruined, but dead—-empty, swept, and gar- 
nished, with the seven devils of loneliness in riot- 
ous possession. In time —in a few thousand years 
perhaps — the city would crumble away. He was 
distinctly glad that one house at least had set the 
example. 

The path dropped beneath his feet on a shelf of 
solid rock that curved over like. the edge of a 
waterfall. Tarvin took only one step, and fell, 
for the rock was worn into deep gutters, smoother 
than ice, by the naked feet of millions who had 
trodden that way for no man knew how many 
years. When he rose he heard a malignant chuc- 


190 THE NAULAHKA. 


kle, half suppressed, which ended in a choking 
cough, ceased, and broke out anew. Tarvin regis- 
tered an oath to find that scoffer when he had 
found the necklace, and looked to his foothold more 
carefully. At this point it. seemed that the Cow’s 
Mouth must be some sort of disused quarry fringed 
to the ps with rank vegetation. 

All sight of what lay below him was blocked 
by the thick foliage of trees that leaned forward, 
bowing their heads together as night-watchers hud- 
dle over a corpse. Once upon a time there had 
been rude steps leading down the almost sheer 
descent, but the naked feet had worn them to 
glassy knobs and lumps, and blown dust had made 
a thin soil in their chinks. Tarvin looked long 
and angrily, because the laugh came from the 
bottom of this track, and then, digging his heel 
into the mould, began to let himself down step 
by step, steadying himself by the tufts of grass. 
Before he had realized it, he was out of reach of 
the sun, and neck-deep in tall grass. Still there 
was a sort of pathway under his feet, down the 
almost perpendicular side. He gripped the grass, 
and went on. ‘The earth beneath his elbows grew 
moist, and the rock where it cropped out showed 
rotten with moisture and coated with moss. The 
air grew cold and damp. Another plunge down- 
ward revealed to him what the trees were guard- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST... ae 


ing, as he drew breath on a narrow stone ledge. 
They sprung from the masonry round the sides of 
a square tank of water so stagnant that it had 
corrupted past corruption, and lay dull-blue under 
the blackness of the trees. The drought of summer 
had shrunk it, and a bank of dried mud ran round 
its sides. The head of a sunken stone pillar, 
carved with monstrous and obscene gods, reared 
itself from the water like the head of a tortoise 
swimming to land. ‘The birds moved in the sunlit 
branches of the trees far overhead. Little twigs 
and berries dropped into the water, and the noise 
of their fall echoed from side to side of the tank 
that received no sunlight. 

The chuckle that had so annoyed Tarvin broke 
out again as he listened. This time it was behind 
him, and, wheeling sharply, he saw that it came 
from a thin stream of water that spurted fitfully 
from the rudely carved head of a cow, and dripped 
along a stone spout into the heavy blue pool. Be- 
hind that spout the moss-grown rock rose sheer. 
This, then, was the Cow’s Mouth. 

The tank lay at the bottom of a shaft, and the 


one way down to it was that by which Tarvin had 





come —a path that led from the sunlight to the 
chill and mould of a vault. 
“Well, this is kind of the King, anyhow,” he 


said, pacing the ledge cautiously, for it was almost 


192 THE NAULAHKA. 


as slippery as the pathway on the rocks. “ Now, 
what’s the use of this?” he continued, returning. 
The ledge ran only round one side of the tank, 
and, unless he trusted to the mud-banks on the 
other three, there was no hope of continuing his 
exploration further. The Cow’s Mouth chuckled 
again, as a fresh jet of water forced its way through 
the formless jaws. 

“Oh, dry up!” he muttered impatiently, staring 
through the half light that veiled all. 

He dropped a piece of rock on the mud under 
the lip of the ledge, then tested it with a cautious 
foot, found that it bore, and decided to walk round 
the tank. As there were more trees to the right 
of the ledge than to the left, he stepped off on 
the mud from the right, holding cautiously to the 
branches and the tufts of grass in case of any false 
step. 

When the tank was first made its rock walls had 
been perfectly perpendicular, but time and weather 
and the war of the tree roots had broken and 
scarred the stone in a thousand places, giving a 
scant foothold here and there. 

Tarvin crept along the right side of the tank, 
resolved, whatever might come, to go round it. 
The gloom deepened as he came directly under the 
largest fig-tree, throwing a thousand arms across 
the water, and buttressing the rock with snake-like 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 193 


roots as thick as a man’s body. Here, sitting on 
a bole, he rested and looked at the ledge. The 
sun, shooting down the path that he had trampled 
through the tall grass, threw one patch of ght on 
the discolored marble of the ledge and on the blunt 
muzzle of the cow’s head; but where Tarvin rested 
under the fig-tree there was darkness, and an intol- 
erable scent of musk. The blue water was not 
inviting to watch; he turned his face inward to 
the rock and the trees, and, looking up, caught 
the emerald-green of a parrot’s wing moving among 
the upper branches. Never in his life had Tarvin 
so acutely desired the blessed sunshine. He was 
cold and damp, and conscious that a gentle breeze 
was blowing in his face from between the snaky 
tree roots. 

It was the sense of space more than actual sight 
that told him that there was a passage before him 
shrouded by the roots on which he sat, and it 
was his racial instinct of curiosity rather than any 
love of adventure that led him to throw himself at 
the darkness, which parted before and closed behind 
him. He could feel that his feet were treading 
on cut stone overlaid with a thin layer of dried 
mud, and, extending his arms, found masonry on 
each side. Then he lighted a match, and con- 
gratulated himself that his ignorance of cows’ 


mouths had not led him to bring a lantern with 
O 


194 THE NAULAHKA, 


him. The first match flickered in the draft and 
went out, and before the flame had died he heard 
a sound in front of him like the shivering back- 
ward draw of a wave on a pebbly beach. The noise 
was not inspiriting, but Tarvin pressed on for a 
few steps, looking back to see that the dull glim- 
mer of the outer day was still behind him, and 
lighted another match, guarding it with his hands. 
At his next step he shuddered from head to foot. 
His heel had crashed through a skull on the 
ground. 

The match showed him that he had quitted the 
passage, and was standing in a black space of 
unknown dimensions. He fancied that he saw 
the outline of a pillar, or rows of pillars, flicker- 
ing drunkenly in the gloom, and was all too sure 
that the ground beneath him was strewn with 
bones. Then he became aware of pale emerald 
eyes watching him fixedly, and perceived that there 
was deep breathing in the place other than his 
own. He flung the match down, the eyes retreated, 
there was a wild rattle and crash in the darkness, 
a howl that might have been bestial or human, and 
Tarvin, panting between the tree roots, swung him- 
self to the left, and fled back over the mud-banks 
to the ledge, where he stood, his back to the Cow’s 
Mouth and his revolyer in his hand. 

In that moment of waiting for what might emerge 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 195 


from the hole in the side of the tank Tarvin tasted 
all the agonies of pure physical terror. Then he 
noted with the tail of his eye that a length of 
mud-bank to his left—half the mud-bank, in fact 
—was moving slowly into the water. It floated 
slowly across the tank, a long welt of filth and 
slime. Nothing came out of the hole between the 
fig-roots, but the mud-bank grounded under the 
ledge almost at Tarvin’s feet, and opened horny 
eyelids, heavy with green slime. 

The Western man is familiar with many strange 
things, but the alligator does not come within the 
common range of his experiences. A second time 
Tarvin moved from point to point without being 
able to explain the steps he took to that end. He 
found himself sitting in the sunshine at the head 
of the slippery path that led downward. His hands 
were full of the wholesome jungle-grass and the 
clean, dry dust. He could see the dead city about 
him, and he felt that it was home. 

The Cow’s Mouth chuckled and choked out of 
sight as it had chuckled since the making of the 
tank, and that was at the making of time. <A 
man, old, crippled, and all but naked, came through 
the high grass leading a little kid, and calling 
mechanically from time to time, “Ao, bhai! Ao!” 
(“Come, brother! Come!”) ‘Tarvin marvelled first 
at his appearance on earth at all, and next that he 


196 THE NAULAHKA. 


could so unconcernedly descend the path to the 
darkness and the horror below. He did not know 
that the sacred crocodile of the Cow’s Mouth was 
waiting for his morning meal, as he had waited 
in the days when Gunnaur was peopled, ane its 
queens never dreamed of death. | 


a | 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 19 


CHAPTER XIII. 


Beat off in our last fight were we ? 

The greater need to seek the sea. 

For Fortune changeth as the moon 

To caravel and picaroon. 

Then, Eastward Ho! or Westward Ho! 

Whichever wind may meetest blow. 

Our quarry sails on either sea, : 

Fat prey for sucn bold lads as we, 

And every sun-dried buccaneer 

Must hand and reef and watch and steer, 

And bear great wrath of sea and sky 

Before the plate-ships wallow by. 

Now, as our tall bow takes the foam, 

Let no man turn his heart to home 

Save to desire land the more 

And larger warehouse for his store 

When treasure won from Santos Bay 

Shall make our sea-washed village gay.* 
Blackbeard. 


Fissy and Tarvin ate their breakfast together, 
half an hour later, in the blotched shadows of the 
serub below the wall: The horse buried his nose 


into his provender, and said nothing. The man 


was equally silent. Once or twice he rose to his 


feet, scanned the irregular line of wall and bastion, 


and shook his head. He had no desire to return 





* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co, 


19s THE NAULAHKa«. 


there. As the sun grew fiercer he found a resting- 
place in the heart of a circle of thorn, tucked the 
saddle under his head, and lay down to sleep. 
Fibby, rolling luxuriously, followed his master’s 
example. The two took their rest while the air 
quivered with heat and the hum of insects, and 
the browsing goats clicked and pattered through 
the water-channels. 

The shadow of the Tower of Glory lengthened, 
fell across the walls, and ran far across the plain; 
the kites began to drop from the sky by twos and 
threes; and naked children, calling one to another, 
collected the goats and drove them to the smoky 
villages before Tarvin roused himself for the home- 
ward journey. 

He halted Fibby once for a last look at Gun- 
naur as they reached the rising ground. The sun- 
light had left the walls, and they ran black against 
the misty levels and the turquoise-blue of the twi- 
light. Fires twinkled from a score of puts about 
the base of the city, but along the ridge of the 
desolation itself there was no light. 

““Mum’s the word, Fibby,” said Tarvin, picking 
up his reins. “We don’t think well of this pic- 
nic, and we won’t mention it at Rhatore.” 

He chirruped, and Fibby went home’as swiftly 
as he could lay hoof to stone, only once suggesting 
refreshment. ‘Tarvin said nothing till the end of 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 199 


the long ride, when he heaved a deep sigh of relief 
as he dismounted in the fresh sunlight of the 
morning. 

Sitting in his room, it seemed to him a waste 
of a most precious opportunity that he had not 
manufactured a torch in Gunnaur and thoroughly 
explored the passage. But the memory of the 
green eyes and the smell of musk came back to 
him, and he shivered. The thing was not to be 
done. Never again, for any consideration under 
the wholesome light of the sun, would he, who 
feared nothing, set foot in the Cow’s Mouth. 

It was his pride that he knew when he had had 
enough. He had had.enough of the Cow’s Mouth; 
and the only thing for which he still wished in 
connection with it was to express his mind about 
it to the Maharajah. Unhappily, this was impos- 
sible. ‘That idle monarch, who, he now saw plainly, 
had sent.him there either in a mood of luxurious 
sportiveness or to throw him off the scent of the 
necklace, remained the only man from whom he 
could look for final victory. It was not to the 
Maharajah that he could afford to.say all that he 
thought. 

Fortunately the Maharajah was too much enter- 
tained by the work which Tarvin immediately insti- 
tuted on the Amet River to inquire particularly 
whether his young friend had sought the Naulahka 


200 THE NAULAHKA. 


at the Gye Mukh. ‘Tarvin had sought an audi- 
ence with the King the morning after his return 
from that black spot, and, with the face of a man 
who had never known fear and who lacks. the 
measure of disappointments, gayly demanded the 
fulfilment of the King’s promise. Having failed 
in one direction on a large scale, he laid the first 
brick on the walls of a new structure without 
delay, as the people of Topaz had begun to build 
their town anew the morning after the fire. His 
experience at the Gye Mukh only sharpened his 
determination, adding to it a grim willingness to 
get even with the man who had sent him there. 

The Maharajah, who felt .in especial need of 
amusement that morning, was very ready to make 
good his promise, and ordered that the long man 
who played pachisi should be granted all the men 
he could use. With the energy of disgust, and 
with a hot memory of the least assured and com- 
fortable moments of his life burning in his breast, 
Tarvin flung himself on the turning of the river 
and the building of his dam. It was necessary, 
it seemed, in the land upon which he had fallen, 
to raise a dust to hide one’s ends. He would raise 
a dust, and it should be on the same scale as the 
catastrophe which he had just encountered — thor- 
ough, business-like, uncompromising. 

He raised it, in fact, in a stupendous cloud. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 201 


Since the state was founded no one had seen any- 
thing like it. The Maharajah lent him all the 
convict labor of his jails, and Tarvin marched the 
little host of leg-ironed kaidies into camp at a 
point five miles beyond the city walls, and sol- 
emnly drew up his plans for the futile damming 
of the barren Amet. His early training as a civil 
engineer helped him to lay out a reasonable plan 
of operations, and to give a semblance of reality 
to his work. His notion was to back up the river 
by means of a dam at a point where it swept 
around a long curye, and to send it straight across 
the plain by excavating a deep bed for it. When 
this was completed the present bed of the river 
would lie bare for several miles, and if there were 
any gold there, as Tarvin said to himself, then 
would be the time to pick it up. Meanwhile his 
operations vastly entertained the King, who rode 
out every morning and watched him directing his 
small army for an hour or more. The marchings 
and countermarchings of the mob of convicts with 

baskets, hoes, shovels, and pannier-laden donkeys, 
the prodigal blasting of rocks, and the general 
bustle and confusion, drew the applause of the 
King, for whom Tarvin always reserved his_ best 
blasts. ‘This struck him as only fair, as the King 
was paying for the powder, and, indeed, for the 
entire entertainment. 


202 THE NAULAHKA. 


Among the unpleasant necessities of his position 
was the need of giving daily to Colonel Nolan, to 
the King, and to all the drummers at the rest- 
house, whenever they might choose to ask him, his 
reasons for damming the Amet. ‘The great Indian 
Government itself also presently demanded his 
reasons, in writing, for damming the Amet; Colonel 
Nolan’s reasons, in writing, for allowing the Amet 
to be dammed; and the King’s reasons for allowing 
anybody but a duly authorized agent of the Goy- 
ernment to dam the Amet. This was accompanied 
by a request for further information. To these 
inquiries Tarvin, for his part, returned an evasive ° 
answer, and felt that he was qualifying himself 
for his political career at home. Colonel Nolan 
explained officially to his superiors that the con- 
victs were employed in remunerative labor, and, 
unofficially, that the Maharajah had been so phe- 
nomenally good for some time past (being kept 
amused by this American stranger), that it would 
be a thousand pities to interrupt the operations. 
Colonel Nolan was impressed by the fact that Tar- 
vin was the Hon. Nicholas Tarvin, and a member 
of the legislature of one of the United States. 

The Government, knowing something of the irre- 
pressible race who stride booted into the council- 
halls of kings, and demand concessions for oil-boring 
from Arracan to the Peshin, said no more, but 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 903 


asked to be suppled with information from time to 
time as to the progress of the stranger’s work. 
When Tarvin heard this he sympathized with the 
Indian Government. He understood this thirst for 
information; he wanted some himself as to the 
present whereabouts of the Naulahka; also touch- 
ing the time it would take Kate to find out that 
she wanted him more than the cure of any misery 
whatever. 

At least twice a week, in fancy, he gave up the 
Naulahka definitely, returned to Topaz, and _ re- 
sumed the business of a real-estate and insurance 
agent. He drew a long breath after each of these 
decisions, with the satisfying recollection that there 
was still one spot on the earth’s suriace where a 
man might come directly at his desires if he pos- 
sessed the sand and the hustle; where he could 
walk a straight path to his ambition; and where 
he did not by preference turn five corners to reach 
an object a block away. 

Sometimes, as he grilled patiently in the river- 
bed under the blighting rays of the Indian sun, 
he would heretically blaspheme the Naulahka, re- 
fusing to believe in its existence, and persuading 
himself that it was as grotesque a lie as the King’s 
parody of a civilized government, or as Dhunpat 
Rai’s helpful surgery. Yet from a hundred sources 
he heard of the existence of that splendor, only 
never in reply to a direct question. 


204 THE NAULAHKA. 


Dhunpat Rai, in particular (once weak enough 
to complain of the new lady doctor’s “excessive 
zeal and surplusage administration”), had given 
him an account that made his mouth water. But 
Dhunpat Rai had not seen the necklace since the 
crowning of the present King, fifteen years before. 
The very convicts on the works, squabbling over the 
distribution of food, spoke of millet as being as 
costly as the Naulahka. ‘Twice the Maharaj Kun- 
war, babbling vaingloriously to his big friend of 
what he would do when he came to the throne, con- 
cluded his confidences with, “And then I shall 
wear the Naulahka in my turban all day long.” 

But when Tarvin asked him where that precious 
necklace lived, the Maharaj Kunwar shook his 
head, answering sweetly, “I do not know.” 

The infernal thing seemed to be a myth, a word, 
a proverb—anything rather than the finest neck- 
lace in the world. In the intervals of blasting 
and excavation he would make futile attempts to 
come upon its track. He took the city ward by 
ward, and explored every temple in each; he rode, 
under pretence of archeological study, to the out- 
lying forts and ruined palaces that lay beyond the 
city in the desert, and roved restlessly through the 
mausoleums that held the ashes of the dead kings 
of Rhatore. He told himself a hundred times that 
he knew each quest to be hopeless; but he needed 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 205 


the consolation of persistent search. And the 
search was always vain. 

Tarvin fought his impatience when he rode abroad 
with the Maharajah. At the palace, which he 
visited at least once a day under pretence of talk- 
ing about the dam, he devoted himself more sedu- 
lously than ever to pachisi. It pleased the Maha- 
rajah in those days to remove himself from the white 
marble pavilion in the orange-garden, where he 
usually spent the spring months, to Sitabhai’s wing 
of the red-stone palace, and to sit in the court-yard 
watching trained parrots firing lttle cannons, and 
witnessing combats. between fighting quail or great 
eray apes dressed in imitation of English officers. 
When Colonel Nolan appeared the apes were hastily 
dismissed; but Tarvin was allowed to watch the 
play throughout, when he was not engaged on the 
dam. He was forced to writhe in inaction and in 
wonder about his necklace, while these childish 
games went forward; but he constantly kept the 
corner of an eye upon the movements of the Maharaj 
Kunwar. There, at least, his wit could serve some 
one. ) 

The Maharajah had given strict orders that the 
child should obey all Kate’s instructions. Even 
his heavy eyes noted an improvement in the health 
of the little one, and Tarvin was careful that he 
should know that the credit belonged .to Kate 


206 THE NAULAHKA., 


alone. With impish perversity the young Prince, 
who had never received an order in his life before, 
learned to find joy in disobedience, and devoted his 
wits, his escort, and his barouche to gamboling in 
the wing of the palace belonging to Sitabhai. 
There he found gray-headed flatterers by the score, 
who abased themselves before him, and told him 
what manner of king he should be in the years 
to come. ‘There also were pretty dancing-girls, 
who sang him songs, and would have corrupted his 
mind but that it was too young to receive corrup- 
tion. There were, besides, apes and peacocks and 
jugglers, —new ones every day,—together with 
dancers on the slack rope, and wonderful packing- 
cases from Calcutta, out of which he was allowed 
to choose ivory-handled pistols and little gold- 
hilted swords with seed-pearls set in a groove along 
the middle, and running musically up and down 
as he waved the blade round his head. Finally, 
the sacrifice of a goat in an opal and ivory temple 
in the heart of the women’s quarters which he 
might watch, allured him that way. Against these 
enticements Kate, moody, grave, distracted, her 
eyes full of the miseries on which it was her daily 
lot to look, and her heart torn with the curelessness 
of it all, could offer only little childish games in 
the missionary’s drawing-room. The heir apparent 
to the throne did not care for leap-frog, which he 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 207 


deemed in the highest degree undignified; nor yet 
for puss-in-the-corner, which seemed to him over- 
active; nor for tennis, which he understood was 
played by his brother princes, but which to him 
appeared no part of a Rajput’s education. Some- 
times, when he was tired (and on rare occasions 
when he escaped to Sitabhai’s wing it was observ- 
able that he returned very tired indeed), he would 
listen long and intently to the stories of battle and 
siege which Kate read to him, and would scandal- 
ize her at the end of the tale by announcing, with 
flashing eye: 

“When I am king I will make my army do all 
those things.” 

It was not in Kate’s nature—she would have 
thought it in the highest degree wrong — to refrain 
from some little attempt at religious instruction. 
But here the child retreated into the stolidity of 
the East, and only said: 

“All these things are very good for you, Kate, 
but all my gods are very good for me; and if my 
father knew, he would be angry.” 

“And what do you worship?” asked Kate, pity- 
ing the young pagan from the bottom of her heart. 

“My sword and my horse,”’ answered the Mahara} 
Kunwar; and he half drew the jewelled sabre that 
was his inseparable companion, returning it witha 
resolute clank that closed the discussion. 


208 THE NAULAHKA. 


But it was impossible, he discovered, to evade 
the long man Tarvin as he evaded Kate. He re- 
sented being called “bub,” nor did he approve of 
“little man.” But Tarvin could drawl the word 
“Prince” with a quiet deference that made the 
young Rajput almost suspect himself the subject 
of a jest. And yet Tarvin Sahib treated him as a 
man, and allowed him, under due precautions, to 


y) 


handle his mighty “gun,” which was not a gun, 
but a pistol. And once, when the Prince had 
coaxed the keeper of the horse into allowing him 
to bestride an unmanageable mount, Tarvin, riding 
up, had picked him out of the depths of the velvet 
saddle, set him on his own saddle-bow, and, in 
the same cloud of dust, shown him how, in his 
own country, they laid the reins on one side or 
the other of the neck of their cattle-ponies to guide 
them in pursuit of a steer broken from the herd. 

The trick of being lifted from his saddle, appeal- 
ing to the “circus” latent in the boy breast even 
of an Eastern prince, struck the Maharaj as so 
amusing that he insisted on exhibiting it before 
Kate; and as Tarvin was a necessary figure in the 
performance, he allured him into helping him with 
it one day before the house of the missionary. Mr. 
and Mrs. Estes came out upon the veranda with 
Kate and watched the exhibition, and the mission- 


ary pursued it with applause and requests for a 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. mee Alls 


repetition, which, having been duly given, Mrs. 
Estes asked Tarvin if he would not stay to dinner 
with them since he was there. Tarvin glanced 
doubtfully at Kate for permission, and, by a pro- 
cess of reasoning best known to lovers, construed 
the veiling of her eyes and the turning of her 
head into assent. 

After dinner, as they sat on the veranda in the 
starlight, “Do you really mind?” he asked. 

“What?” asked she, lifting her sober eyes and 
letting them fall upon him. 

“My seeing you sometimes. I know you don’t 
like it; but it will help me to look after you. You 
must see by this time that you need looking after.” 
eSOho no.” 

“Thank you,” said Tarvin, almost humbly. 

“T mean I don’t need looking after.” 

“But you don’t dislike it?” 

“It’s good of you,” she said impartially. 

“Well, then, it will be bad of you not to like 
ice 

Kate had to smile. “I guess I like it,” she 
replied. 

“And you will let me come once in a while? 
You can’t think what the rest-house is. Those 
drummers will kill me yet. And the coolies at 
the dam are not in my set.” 


“Well, since you’re here. But you ought not 
P 


210 THE NAULAHKA. 


to be here. Do me a real kindness, and go away, 
Nicks 

“Give me an easier one.” 

“But why are you here? You can’t show any 
rational reason.” 

“Yes; that’s what the British Government says. 
But I brought my reason along.” 

He confessed his longing for something homely 
and natural and American after a day’s work under 
a heathen and raging sun; and when he put it 
in this hght, Kate responded on another side. She 
had been brought up with a sense of responsibility 
for making young men feel at home; and he cer- 
tainly felt at home when she was able to produce, 
two or three evenings later, a Topaz paper sent her 
by her father. Tarvin pounced on it, and turned 
the flimsy four pages inside out, and then back 
again. 

He smacked his lips. “Oh, good, good, good!” 
he murmured relishingly. “Don’t the advertise- 
ments look nice? What’s the matter with Topaz?” 
cried he, holding the sheet from him at arm’s- 
length, and gazing ravenously up and down its 
columns. “Oh, she’s all right.” The cooing, 
musical singsong in which he uttered this conse- 
crated phrase was worth going a long way to hear. 
“Say, we're coming on, aren’t we? We're not 
lagging nor loafing, nor fooling our time away, if 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. st 


we haven’t got the Three C.’s yet. We're keeping 
up with the procession. Hi-yi! look at the ‘Rust- 
ler Rootlets ?— just about a stickful! Why, the 
poor old worm-eaten town is going sound, sound 
~ asleep in her old age, isn’t she? Think of taking 
a railroad there’ Listen to this: 


“Milo C. Lambert, the owner of ‘Lambert’s Last 
Ditch,’ has a car-load of good ore on the dump, but, like 
all the rest of us, don’t find it pays to ship without a 
railroad line nearer than fifteen miles. Milo says Colo- 
rado won’t be good enough for him after he gets his ore 
away. 


“T should think not. Come to Topaz, Milo! 
And this: 


“When the Three C.’s comes into the city in the fall 
we sha’n’t be hearing this talk about hard times. Mean- 
time it’s an injustice to the town, which all honest citi- 
zens should resent and do their best to put down, to 
speak of Rustler as taking a back seat to any town of its 
age in the State. As a matter of fact, Rustler was never 
more prosperous. With mines which produced last year 
ore valued at a total of $1,200,000, with six churches 
of different denominations, with a young but prosperous | 
and growing academy which is destined to take a front 
rank among American schools, with a record of new 
buildings erected during the past year equal if not su- 
perior to any town in the mountains, and with a popula- 
tion of lively and determined business men, Rustler bids 
fair in the coming year to be worthy of her name. 


“Who said ‘afraid’? We’re not hurt. Hear us 
whistle. But I’m sorry Heckler let that into his 


VAR THE NAULAHKA. 


correspondence,” he added, with a momentary frown. | 
“Some of our Topaz citizens might miss the fun 
of it, and go over to Rustler to wait for the Three 
C.’s. Coming in the fall, is it? Oh, dear! Oh, dear, 
dear, dear! This is the way they amuse themselves 
while they dangle their legs over Big Chief Moun- 


tain and wait for it: 


“Our merchants have responded to the recent good 
feeling which-has pervaded the town since word came 
that President Mutrie, on his return to Denver, was 
favorably considering. the claims of Rustler. Robbins 
has his front windows prettily decorated and filled with 
fancy articles. His store seems to be the most popular 
for the youngsters who have a nickle or two to spend. 


“JT should murmur! Won’t you like to see the 
Three C.’s come sailing into Topaz one of these 
fine mornings, little girl?” asked Tarvin, sud- 
denly, as he seated himself on the sofa beside 
her, and opened out the paper so that she could 
look over his shoulder. 

“Would you like it, Nick?” 

“ Would 11” 

“Then, of course, I should. But I think you 
will be better off if it doesn’t. It will make you 
too rich. See father.” 

“Well, I’d put on the brakes if I found myself 
getting real rich. I'll stop just after I’ve passed 
the Genteel Poverty Station. Isn’t it good to see 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. F138 


the old heading again — Heckler’s name as. large as 
life just under ‘oldest paper in Divide County,’ 
and Heckler’s fist sticking out all over a rousing 
editorial on the prospects of the town? Homelike, 
isn’t it? He’s got two columns of new advertis- 
ing; that shows what the town’s doing. And look 
at the good old ‘ads.’ from the Eastern agencies. 
How they take you back! I never expected to 
thank Heaven for a castoria advertisement; did 
you, Kate? But I swear it makes me feel good all 
over. I'll read the patent inside if you say much.” 

Kate smiled. The paper gave her a little pang 
of homesickness too. She had her own feeling for 
Topaz; but what reached her through the “ Tele- 
gram’s”’ lively pages was the picture of her mother 
sitting in her kitchen in the long afternoons (she 
had sat in the kitchen so long in the poor and 
wandering days of the family that she did it now 
by preference), gazing sadly out at white-topped 
Big Chief, and wondering what her daughter was 
doing at that hour. Kate remembered well that 
afternoon hour in the kitchen when the work was 
done. She recalled from the section-house days 
the superannuated rocker, once a_ parlor chair, 
which her mother had hung with skins and told 
off for kitchen service. Kate remembered with 
starting tears that her mother had always wanted 
her. to sit in it, and how good it had been to see 


214 THE NAULAHKA. 


from her. own hassock next the oven the little 
mother swallowed up in its deeps. She heard the 
cat purring under the stove, and the kettle singing; 
the clock ticked in her ear, and the cracks between 
the boards in the floor of the hastily built sec- 
tion-house blew the cold prairie air against her 
heels. | 

She gazed over Tarvin’s shoulder at the two 
cuts of Topaz which appeared in every issue of the 
“'Telegram,’’—the one representing the town in 
its first year, the other the town of to-day, —and 
a lump rose in her throat. 

“Quite a difference, isn’t there?” said Tarvin, 
following her eye. “Do you remember where your 
father’s tent used to stand, and the old section- 
house, just here by the river?” He pointed, and 
Kate nodded without speaking. “Those were good 
days, weren’t they? Your father wasn’t as rich as 
he is now, and neither was I; but we were all 
mighty happy together.” 

Kate’s thought drifted back to that time, and 
called up other visions of her mother expending 
her slight frame in many forms of hard work. The 
memory of the little characteristic motion with 
which she would shield with raised hand the worn 
young old face when she would be broiling above 
an open fire, or frying doughnuts, or lifting the 
stove-lid, forced her-to gulp down the tears. The 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. O15 


simple picture was too clear, even to the lght of 
the fire on the face, and the pink light shining 
through the frail hand. 

“Hello!” said Tarvin, casting his eye up and 
down the columns, “they’ve had to put another 
team on to keep the streets clean. We had one. 
Heckler don’t forget the climate either. And they 
are doing well at the Mesa House. That’s a good 
sign. The tourists will all have to stop over at 
Topaz when the new line comes through, and we 
have the right hotel. Some towns might think we 
had a little tourist traffic now. Here’s Loomis 
dining fifty at the Mesa the other day — through 
express. ‘They’ve formed a new syndicate to work 
the Hot Springs. Do you know, I shouldn’t won- 
der if they made a town down there. Heckler’s 
right. It will help Topaz. We don’t mind a 
town that near. It makes a suburb of it.” 

He marked his sense of the concession implied 
in letting him stay that evening by going early; 
but he did not go so early on the following even- 
ing, and as he showed no inclination to broach 
forbidden subjects, Kate found herself glad to have 
him there, and it became a habit of his to drop 
in, in the evenings, and to join the group that 
gathered, with open doors and windows, about the 
family lamp. In the happiness of seeing visible 
effects from her labors blossoming under her eyes, 


216 THE NAULAHKA. 


Kate regarded his presence less and less. Some- 
times she would let him draw her out upon the 
veranda, under the sumptuous Indian night — nights 
when the heat-lghtning played like a drawn sword 
on the horizon, and the heavens hovered near the 
earth, and the earth was very still. But com- 
monly they sat within, with the missionary and 
his wife, talking of Topaz, of the hospital, of the 
Maharaj Kunwar, of the dam, and sometimes of 
the Estes children at Bangor. For the most part, 
however, when the talk was among the group, it 
fell upon the infinitesimal gossip of a sequestered 
life, to the irritation and misery of Tarvin. 

When the conversation lagged in these deeps he 
would fetch up violently with a challenge to Estes 
on the subject of the tariff or silver legislation, 
and after that the talk was at least lively. Tar- 

vin was, by his training, largely a newspaper- 
educated man. But he had also been taught at 
first hand by life itself, and by the habit of making 
his own history; and he used the hairy fist of horse- 
sense in dealing with the theories of newspaper 
politics and the systems of the schools. 

Argument had no allurements for him, however; 
it was with Kate that he talked when he could, 
and oftenest, of late, of the hospital, since her prog- 
ress there had begun to encourage her. She yielded’ 
at last to his entreaties to be allowed to see this 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 217 


paragon, and to look for himself upon the reforms 
she had wrought. 

Matters had greatly improved since the days of 
the lunatic and the “much-esteemed woman,” but 
only Kate knew how much remained to be done. 
The hospital was at least clean and sweet if she 
inspected it every day, and the people in their 
fashion were grateful for kinder tending and more 
skilful treatment than they had hitherto dreamed 
of. Upon each cure a rumor went abroad through 
the country-side of a new power in the land, and 
other patients came; or the convalescent herself 
would bring back a sister, a child, or a mother 
with absolute faith in the power of the White 
Fairy to make all whole. They could not know 
all the help that Kate brought in the train of her 
quiet movements, but for what they knew they 
blessed her as they lay. Her new energy swept 
even Dhunpat Rai along the path of reform. He 
became curious in the limewashing of stonework, 
the disinfecting of wards, the proper airing of bed- 
linen, and even the destruction by fire of the bed- 
steads, once his perquisite, on which smallpox 
patients had died. Native-like, he worked best for 
a woman with the knowledge that there was an 
energetic white man in the background. ‘Tarvin’s 
visit, and a few cheery words addressed to him by 
that capable outsider, supphed him with this knowl- 
edge. 


218 THE NAULAHKA. 


Tarvin could not understand the uncouth talk 
of the out-patients, and did not visit the women’s 
wards; but he saw enough to congratulate Kate 
unreservedly. She smiled contentedly. Mrs. Estes 
was sympathetic, but in no way enthusiastic; and 
it was good to be praised by Nick, who had found 
so much to blame in her project. 

“It’s clean and it’s wholesome, little girl,” he 
said, peering and sniffing; “and you’ve done mir- 
acles with these jellyfish. If you'd. been on the 
opposition ticket instead of your father I shouldn’t 
be a member of the legislature.” ¢ 

Kate never talked to him about that large part 
of her work which lay among the women of the 
Maharajah’s palace. Little by little she learned 
her way about such portions of the pile as she was 
permitted to traverse. From the first she had 
understood that the palace was ruled by one Queen, 
of whom the women spoke under their breath, and 
whose lightest word, conveyed by the mouth of a 
grinning child, set the packed mazes humming. 
Once only had she seen this Queen, glimmering 
like a tiger-beetle among a pile of kincob cushions 
—a lithe, black-haired young girl, it seemed, with 
a voice as soft as running water at night, and with 
eyes that had no shadow of fear in them. She 
turned lazily, the jewels clinking on ankle, arm, 
and bosom, and looked at Kate for a long time 
without speaking. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 219 


2 


“TI have sent that I may see you,” she said at 
last. “You have come here across the water to 
help these cattle?” 

Kate nodded, every instinct in her revolting at 
the silver-tongued splendor at her feet. 

“You are not married?” The Queen put her 
hands behind her head and looked at the painted 
peacocks on the ceiling. 

Kate did not reply, but her heart was hot. 

“Ts there any sickness here?” she asked at last 
sharply. “I have much to do.” 

“There is none, unless it may be that you your- 
self are sick. There are those who sicken without 
knowing it.” 

The eyes turned to meet Kate’s, which were 
blazing with indignation. This woman, lapped in 
idleness, had struck at the life of the Maharaj 
Kunwar; and the horror of it was that she was 
younger than herself. 

“ Achcha,” said the Queen, still more slowly, 
watching her face. “If you hate me so, why do 
you not say so? You white people love truth.” 

Kate turned on her heel to leave the room. Sita- 
bhai called her back for an instant, and, moved by 
some royal caprice, would have caressed her, but 
she fled indignant, and was careful never again to 
venture into that wing of the palace. None of the 
women there called for her services, and not once 


220 THE NAULAHKA. 


but several times, when she passed the mouth of 
the covered way that led to Sitabhai’s apartments, 
she saw a little naked child flourishing a jewelled 
knife, and shouting round the headless carcass of a 
goat whose blood was flooding the white marble. 
“That,” said the women, “is the gypsy’s son. He 
learns to kill daily. A snake is a snake, and a 
gypsy is a gypsy, till they are dead.” 

There was no slaughter of goats, singing of 
songs, or twangling of musical instruments in the 
wing of the palace that made itself specially Kate’s 
own. Here lived, forgotten by the Maharajah and 
mocked by Sitabhai’s maidens, the mother of the 
Maharaj Kunwar. Sitabhai had taken from her — 
by the dark arts of the gypsies, so the Queen’s 
adherents said; by her own beauty and knowledge 
in love, they sang in the other wing of the palace 
—all honor and consideration due to her as the 
Queen Mother. There were scores of empty rooms 
where once there had been scores of waiting-women, 
and those who remained with the fallen Queen 
were forlorn and ill-favored. She herself was a _ 
middle-aged woman, by Eastern standards; that is 
to say, she had passed twenty-five, and had never 
been more than ordinarily comely. 

Her eyes were dull with much weeping, and her 
mind was full of superstitions —fears for every 
hour of the night and the day, and vague terrors, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Oy 


bred of loneliness, that made her tremble at the 
sound of a footfall. In the years of her prosperity 
she had been accustomed to perfume herself, put 
on her jewels, and with braided hair await the 
Maharajah’s coming. She would still call for her 
jewels, attire herself as of old, and wait amid the 
respectful silence of her attendants till the long 
night gave way to the dawn, and the dawn showed 
the furrows on her cheeks. Kate had seen one 
such vigil, and perhaps showed in her eyes the 
wonder that she could not repress, for the Queen 
Mother fawned on her timidly after the jewels had 
been put away, and begged her not to laugh. 

“You do not understand, Miss Kate,” she pleaded. 
“There is one custom in your country and another 
in ours; but still you are a woman, and you will 
know.” 

“But you know that no one will come,” Kate said 
tenderly. 

“Yes, I know; but—no, you are not a woman, 
only a fairy that has come across the water to help 
me and mine.” 

Here again Kate was baffled. [xcept in the mes- 
sage sent by the Maharaj Kunwar, the Queen 
Mother never referred to the danger that threat- 
ened her son’s life. Again and again Kate had 
tried to lead up to the subject — to gain some hint, 
at least, of the nature of the plot. 


ey, THE NAULAHKA.: 


“T know nothing,” the Queen would reply 
“Here behind the curtain no one knows anything. 
Miss Kate, if my own women lay dead out there 
in the sun at noon,’—she pointed downward 
through the tracery of her window to the flagged 
path below, —‘“I should know nothing. Of what 
I said I know nothing; but surely it is allowed,” 
—she lowered her voice to a whisper, — “oh, surely 
it is allowed to a mother to bid another woman 
look to her son. He is so old now that he thinks 
himself a man, and wanders far, and so young that 
he thinks the world will do him no harm. Ahi! 
And he is so wise that he knows a thousand times 
more than I: he speaks English lke an English- 
man. How can I control him with my little learn- 
ing and my very great love? I say to you, Be 
good to my son. That I can say aloud, and write 
it upon a wall, if need were. There is no harm 
in that. But if I said more, look you, the plaster 
between the stones beneath me would gape to suck 
it in, and the wind would blow all my words across 
to the villages. JI am a stranger here —a Rajputni 
from Kulu, a thousand thousand coss away. They 
bore me here in a litter to be married—in the 
dark they bore me for a month; and except that 
some of my women have told me, I should not 
know which way the home wind blows when it 
goes to Kulu. What can a strange cow do in the 
byre? May the gods witness.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 220 


“Ah, but teil me what you think?” 

“T think nothing,” the Queen would answer sul- 
lenly. “What have women to do with thinking? 
They love and they suffer. I have said all that I 
may say. Miss Kate, some day you will bear a little 
son. As you have been good to my son, so may 
the gods be good to yours when that time comes, 
and you know how the heart is full of love.” 

“If I am to protect him, I must know. You 
leave me in the dark.” 

“And I also am in the dark—and the darkness 
is full of danger.” 


TARVIN himself was much about the palace, not 
only because he perceived that it was there he 
might most hopefully keep his ear to the ground 
for news of the Naulahka, but because it enabled 
him to observe Kate’s comings and goings, and 
with his hand ready for a rapid movement to his 
pistol-pocket. 

His gaze followed her at these times, as at others, 
with the longing look of the lover; but he said 
nothing, and Kate was grateful to him. It was a 
time, as it seemed to him, to play the part of the 
Tarvin who had carried water for her long ago at 
the end of the section; it was a time to stand 
back, to watch, to guard, but not to trouble her. 

The Maharai Kunwar came often ander his eve, 


224 THE NAULAHKA. 


and he was constantly inventing amusing things 
for him to do remote from Sitabhai’s court-yard; 
but the boy would occasionally break away, and 
then it was Tarvin’s task to go after him and 
make sure that he came to no harm. One after- 
noon when he had spent some time in coaxing 
the child away, and had finally resorted to force, 
much to the child’s disgust, a twelve-foot balk of 
teak-wood, as he was passing out under an arch 
in process of repair, crashed down from the scaffold- 
ing just in front of Fibby’s nose. The horse 
retired into the court-yard on his hind legs, and 
Tarvin heard the rustle of the women behind the 
shutters. 

He reflected on the incurable-slackness of these 
people, stopped to swear at the workmen crouched 
on the scaffolding in the hollow of the arch, and 
went on. They were no less careless about the 
dam, —it was in the blood, he supposed, —for the 
head man of a coolie-gang, who must have crossed 
the Amet twenty times, showed him a new ford 
across a particularly inviting channel, which ended 
in a quicksand; and when Tarvin had flung him- 
self clear, the gang spent half the day in hauling 
Fibby out with ropes. They could not even build 
a temporary bridge without leaving the boards 
loose, so that a horse’s hoof found its way between ; 
and the gangs seemed to make a point of letting 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 225 


bullock-carts run down the steep embankments into 
the small of Tarvin’s back, when, at infrequent 
intervals, that happened to be turned. 

Tarvin was filled with great respect for the Brit- 
ish Government, which worked on these materials, 
and began to understand the mild-faced melancholy 
and decisive views of Lucien Estes about the native 
population, as well as to sympathize more keenly 
than ever with Kate. 

This curious people were now, he learned with 
horror, to fill the cup of their follies by marrying 
the young Maharaj Kunwar to a three-year-old babe, 
brought from the Kulu hills, at vast expense, to 
be his bride. He sought out Kate at the mission- 
ary’s, and found her quivering with indignation. 
She had just heard. 

“It’s like them to waste a wedding where it 
isn’t wanted,” said Tarvin, soothingly. 

Since he saw Kate excited, it became his part to 
be calm. 

“Don’t worry your overworked head about it, 
Kate. You are trying to do too much, and you 
are feeling too much. You will break down before 
you know it, from sheer exhaustion of the chord 
of sympathy.” 

*Oh, no!” said Kate. “I feel quite strong 
enough for anything that may come. I mustn’t 
break down. Think of this marriage coming on. 

Q 


926 THE NAULAHKA. 


The Maharaj will need me more than ever. He 
has just told me that he won’t get any sleep for 
three days and three nights while their priests are 
praying over him.” 

“Crazy! Why, it’s a quicker way of killing him 
than Sitabhai’s. Heavens! I daren’t think of it. 
Let’s talk of something else. Any papers from 
your father lately? This kind of thing makes 
Topaz taste sort of good.” 

She gave him a package received by the last 
post, and he fell silent as he ran his eye hastily 


? 


over a copy of the “Telegram” six weeks old; but | 
he seemed to find little comfort in it. His brows 
knitted. 

*Pshaw!” he exclaimed with irritation, “this 
won’t do!” 

IW hat aa 7G 

“Heckler bluffing about the Three C.’s, and not 
doing it well. That isn’t like Jim. He talks 
about it as a sure thing as hard as if he didn’t 
believe in it, and had a private tip from somewhere 
that it wasn’t coming after all. I’ve no doubt he 
has. But he needn’t give it away to Rustler lke 
that. Let’s look at the real-estate transfers. Ah! 
that tells the story,” he exclaimed excitedly, as 
his eye rested on the record of the sale of a parcel 
of lots on G street. “Prices are going down — 
away, "way down. The boys are caving. They’re 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 297 


giving up the fight.” He leaped up and marched 
about the room nervously. “Heavens! if I could 
only get word to them!” 

“Why — what, Nick? What word do you want 
to send them?” 

He pulled himself up instantly. 

“To let them know that J believe in it,” he 
said. “To get them to hold on.” 

“But suppose the road doesn’t come to Topaz, 
after all. How can you know, away off here in 
India?” 

“Come to Topaz, little girl!” he shouted. 
“Come to Topaz! It’s coming if I have to lay 
the rails!” 

But the news about the temper of the town 
vexed and disconcerted him notwithstanding, and 
after he left Kate that night he sent a cable to 
Heckler, through Mrs. Mutrie, desiring her to for- 
ward the despatch from Denver, as if that were 
the originating office of the message. 


HECKLER, Topaz.— Take a brace, for God’s 
sake! Got dead cinch on Three C.’s. Trust me, 
TARVIN. 





and boom like 


228 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


Because I sought it far from men 
In deserts and alone, 

T found it burning overhead, — 
The jewel of a throne. 


Because I sought — I sought it so 
And spent my days to find, 
It blazed one moment ere it left 
The blacker night behind.* 
The Crystals of Iswara. 


A city of tents had grown up in three days 
without the walls of Rhatore—a city greened with 
far-brought lawns of turf, and stuck about with 
hastily transplanted orange-trees, wooden lamp- 
posts painted in gaudy colors, and a cast-iron foun- 
tain of hideous design. Many guests were expected 
at Rhatore to grace the marriage of the Maharaj 
Kunwar — barons, princes, thakurs, lords of waste 
fortresses and of hopeless crags of the North and 
the South, fiefs from the fat, poppy-blazoned plains 
of Mewar, and brother rajahs of the King. They 


came accompanied by their escorts, horse and foot. 





* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 229 


In a land where genealogies, to be respectable, 
must run back without a break for eight hundred 
years, it is a delicate matter not to offend; and 
all were desperately jealous of the place and pre- 
cedence of their neighbors in the camp. Lest the 
task should be too easy, the household bards of 
the princes came with them, and squabbled with 
the court officials of Gokral Seetarun. Behind the 
tents stretched long lines of horse-pickets, where 
the fat pink-and-blue-spotted stallions neighed and 
squealed at one another, under their heavy velvet 
trappings, all day long; and the ragged militia of 
twenty tiny native states smoked and gambled 
among their saddles, or quarrelled at the daily dis- 
tribution of food furnished by the generosity of the 
Maharajah. From hundreds of miles about, va- 
grant and mendicant priests of every denomination 
had flocked into the city, and their salmon-colored 
raiment, black blankets, or ash-smeared nudity gave 
Tarvin many minutes of untrammelled entertain- 
ment as he watched them roaming fearlessly from 
tent to tent, their red eyes rolling in their heads, 
alternately threatening or fawning for gifts. The 
rest-house, as Tarvin discovered, was crammed 
with fresh contingents of commercial travellers. 
His Highness was not likely to pay at such a 
season, but fresh orders would be plentiful. The 
city itself was brilliant with coats of pink-and- 


230 THE NAULAHKA. 


white lime-wash, and the main streets were ob- 
structed with the bamboo scaffoldings of fireworks. 
Every house-front was swept and newly luted with 
clean mud, and the doorways were hung with mari- 
golds and strings of jasmine-buds. Through the 
crowds tramped the sweating sweetmeat-dealers, 
venders of hawks, dealers in cheap jewelry and 
glass bracelets and little English mirrors, while 
camels, loaded with wedding gifts of far-off kings, 
ploughed through the crowd, or the mace-bearers ot 
the state cleared a path with their silver staves for 
the passage of the Maharajah’s carriages. Forty 
barouches were in use, and, as long as horse-flesh 
held out, or harness could be patched with string, 
it did not beseem the dignity of the state to pro- 
vide less than four horses to each. As these horses 
were untrained, and as the little native boys, out 
of sheer lightness of heart, touched off squibs and 
crackers at high noon, the streets were animated. 

The hill on which the palace stood seemed to 
smoke like a volcano, for the little dignitaries 
came without cessation, each expecting the salute 
of cannon due to his rank. Between the roars of 
the ordnance, strains of uncouth music would break 
from the red walls, and presently some officer of 
the court would ride out of one of the gates, fol- 
lowed by all his retinue, each man gorgeous as a 
cock-pheasant in spring, his moustache fresh oiled, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 231 


and curled fiercely over his ears; or one of the 
royal elephants, swathed in red velvet and bullion 
from shoulder to ankle, would roll out under the 
weight of his silver howdah, and trumpet till the 
streets were cleared for his passage. Seventy ele- 
phants were fed daily by the King —no mean charge, 
since each beast consumed as much green fodder 
daily as he could carry on his back, as well as 
thirty or forty pounds of flour. Now and again 
one of the monsters, maddened by the noise and 
confusion, and by the presence of strange rivals, 
would be overtaken with paroxysms of blind fury. 
Then he would be hastily stripped of his trappings, 
bound with ropes and iron chains, hustled out of 
the city between two of his fellows, and tied down 
half a mile away by the banks of the Amet, to 
scream and rage till the horses in the neighboring 
camps broke their pickets and stampeded wildly 
among the tents. Pertab Singh, commandant of 
his Highness’s body-guard, was in his glory. Every 
hour of the day gave him excuse for charging with 
his troop on mysterious but important errands be- 
tween the palace and the tents of the princes. The 
formal interchange of visits alone occupied two 
days. Each prince with his escort would solemnly 
drive to the palace, and half an hour later the 
silver state barouche and the Maharajah himself, 
jewelled from head to heel, :-would return the visit, 


Duty THE NAULAHKA. 


while the guns gave word of the event to the city 
of houses and to the city of tents. 

When night fell on the camp there was no silence 
till near the dawn, for strolling players, singers of 
songs, and tellers of stories, dancing-girls, brawny 
Oudh wrestlers, and camp-followers beyond count- 
ing, wandered from tent to tent making merry. 
When these had departed, the temples in the city 
sent forth the hoarse cries of conchs, and Kate, lis- 
tening, seemed to hear in every blast the wail of 
the little Maharaj Kunwar, who was being prepared 
for his marriage by interminable prayers and puri- 
fications. She saw as little of the boy as Tarvin 
did of the King. In those days every request for 
an audience was met with, “He is with his 
priests.” Tarvin cursed all the priests of Rhatore, 
and condemned to every variety of perdition the 
hangdog fakirs that prowled about his path. 

“T wish to goodness they’d come to a point with 
this fool business,”’ he said to himself. “I haven’t 
got a sentury to spend in Rhatore.” 

After nearly a week of uninterrupted clamor, 
blazing sunshine, and moving crowds clad in gar- 
ments the colors of which made Tarvin’s eyes ache, 
there arrived, by the same road that had borne Kate 
to the city, two carriages containing five English- 
men and three Englishwomen, who, later, walked 
about the city with lack-lustre eyes, bored by the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 230 


official duty which compelled them to witness in 
the hot weather a crime which it was not only 
beyond them to hinder, but to which they were 
obliged to lend their official patronage. 

The agent to the Governor-General — that is to 
say, the official representative of the Viceroy in 
Rajputana — had some time before represented to 
the Maharajah that he might range himself in the 
way of progress and enlightenment by ordering that 
his son should not be given in marriage for another 
ten years. The Maharajah, pleading the imme- 
morial custom of his land and the influence of the 
priests, gilded his refusal by a generous donation 
to a women’s hospital in Calcutta which was not 
in want of funds. 

For his own part, Tarvin could not comprehend 
how any government could lend its countenance to 
this wicked farce, calling itself a marriage, which 
was presently to be played out with the assistance 
of two children. He was presently introduced to 
the agent of the Governor-General, who was anx- 
ious to learn more about the damming of the Amet. 
To be asked about the damming of the Amet, when 
he was making no more progress than at present 
with the Naulahka, seemed to Tarvin, however, the 
last touch of insult, and he was not communica- 
tive, asking the agent, instead, a number of urgent 
questions about the approaching infamy at the palace. 


934 ’ THE NAULAHKA. 


The agent declaring the marriage to be a political 
necessity, the destination suggested by Tarvin for 
political necessities of this sort caused the official to 
stiffen, and to look this wild American up and 
down with startled curiosity. They parted on poor 
terms. 

With the rest of the party Tarvin was more at 
ease. The agent’s wife, a tall brunette, belonging 
to one of those families which from the earlest 
days of the East India Company have administered 
the fortunes of India, solemnly inspected Kate’s 
work at the hospital; and being only a woman, and 
not an official, was attracted, and showed that she 
was attracted, by the sad-eyed little woman who 
did not talk about her work. ‘Therefore Tarvin 
devoted himself to the amusement and entertain- 
ment of the agent’s wife, and she pronounced him 
an extraordinary person. “But, then, all Ameri- 
cans are extraordinary, you know, though they’re 
so clever.” 

Not forgetting in the midst of this tumultuous 
pageant that he was a citizen of Topaz, Tarvin told 
her about that blessed city of the plain, away off 
there under the Sauguache Range, where half his 
* implying 
that the dwellers of the western continent had 


’ 


heart lay. He called it “the magic city, 


agreed to call it so by general consent. She was 
not bored; she enjoyed it. Talk of land and im- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 935 


provement companies, boards of trade, town lots, 
and the Three C.’s was fresh to her, and it became 
easy to lead up to what Tarvin actually had in 
mind. What about the Naulahka? Had she ever 
seen it? He asked these questions boldly. 

No; she knew nothing of the Naulahka. Her 
thoughts were bounded by the thought of going 
home in the spring. Home for her meant a little 
house near Surbiton, close to the Crystal Palace, 
where her three-year-old boy was waiting for her; 
and the interests of the other English men and 
women seemed equally remote from Rajputana — not 
to mention the Naulahka. It was only inferentially 
that Tarvin could gather that they had spent the 
greater part of their working lives within the limits 
of the country. They talked as gypsies might talk 
by the roadside a little before the horses are put 
into the caravan. The ways were hot, they im- 
pled, and very dusty; and they hoped one day to 
be able to rest. The wedding was only one more 
weary incident on the line of march, and they 
devoutly wished it over. One of them even envied 
Tarvin for coming to the state with his fresh eye 
and his lively belief in the possibility of getting 
something out of the land beside a harvest of 
regrets. 

The last day of the marriage ceremonies began 


and ended with more cannon, more fireworks, more 


936 THE NAULAHKA. 


clattering of hoofs, more trumpeting of elephants, 
and with the clamor of bands trying to play “God 
Save the Queen.” The Maharaj Kunwar was _ to 
appear in the evening (in an Indian state wedding 
the bride is neither mentioned nor seen) at a ban- 
quet, where the agent of the Governor-General 
would propose his health and that of his father. 
The Maharaj was to make a speech in his best 
English. A court scribe had already composed a 
long oration to be used by his father. Tarvin was 
beginning seriously to doubt whether he should 
ever see the child alive again, and, before the ban- 
quet, rode out into the seething city to reconnoitre. 
It was twilight, and the torches were flaring be- 
tween the houses. Wild outlanders from the desert, 
who had never seen a white man before, caught 
his horse by the bridle, examined him curiously, 
and with a grunt let him pass. The many-colored 
turbans showed under the flickering light like the 
jewels of a broken necklace, and all the white 
housetops were crowded with the veiled figures of 
women. In half an hour the Maharaj Kunwar 
would make his way from the royal temple to the 
banqueting-tent at the head of a procession of 
caparisoned elephants. 

Tarvin forced his way inch by inch through the 
dense crowd that waited at the foot of the temple 
steps. He merely wished to satisfy himself that 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Dat 


the child was well; he wanted to see him come 
from the temple. As he looked about him he saw 
that he was the only white man in the crowd, and 
pitied his jaded acquaintances, who could find no 
pleasure in the wild scene under his eyes. 

The temple doors were closed, and the torchlight 
flashed back from the ivory and silver with which 
they were inlaid. Somewhere out of sight stood 
the elephants, for Tarvin could hear their deep 
breathing and an occasional squeal above the hum 
of the crowd. Half a troop of cavalry, very worn 
and dusty with the day’s labors, were trying to 
clear an open space before the temple, but they 
might as well have tried to divide a rainbow. 
From the roofs of the houses the women were throw- 
ing flowers, sweetmeats, and colored rice into the 
crowd, while small bards, not yet attached to the 
house of any prince, chanted aloud in praise of 
the Maharajah, the Maharaj Kunwar, the Viceroy, 
the agent of the Governor-General, Colonel Nolan, 
and any one else who might possibly reward praise 
with pence. One of these men, recognizing Tar- 
vin, struck up a chant in his honor. He had come, 
said the song, from a far country to dam an ungov- 
ernable river, and fill the country-side with gold; 
his step was like the step of a dromedary in the 
spring; his eye terrible as that of an elephant; and 
the graces of his person such that the hearts of 


238 THE NAULAHKA. 


all the women of Rhatore turned to water when he 
rode upon the public way. Lastly, he would re- 
ward the singer of this poor song with untold gen- 
erosity, and his name and fame should endure in 
‘the land so long as the flag of Gokral Seetarun had 
five colors, or as long as the Naulahka adorned the 
throat of kings. 

Then, with an ear-splitting shriek of conchs, the 
temple doors opened inward, and the yoices of the 
crowd were hushed into a whisper of awe. ‘Tar- 
vin’s hands tightened on the reins of his horse, 
and he leaned forward to stare. The opened doors 
of the temples framed a square of utter darkness, 
and to the screeching of the conchs was added a 
throbbing of innumerable drums. <A_ breath of 
incense, strong enough to make him cough, drifted 
across the crowd, which were absolutely silent 
now. 

The next moment the Maharaj Kunwar, alone 
and unattended, came out of the darkness, and 
stood in the torchlight with his hands on the hilt 
of his sword. The face beneath the turban, draped 
with loops of diamonds under an emerald aigret, 
was absolutely colorless. There were purple cir-_ 
cles about his eyes, and his mouth was half open; 
but the pity Tarvin felt for the child’s weariness 
was silenced by a sudden thrill and leap of his 
heart, for on the gold cloth of the Maharaj Kun- 
war’s breast lay the Naulahka. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 239 


There was no need, this time, to ask any ques- 
tions. It was not he who saw it; its great deep 
eyes seemed to fall on him. It blazed with the 
dull red of the ruby, the angry green of the emer- 
ald, the cold blue of the sapphire, and the white, 
hot glory of the diamond. But dulling all these 
glories was the superb radiance of one gem that 
lay above the great carved emerald on the central 
clasp. It was the black diamond — black as the 
pitch of the infernal lake, and lhghted from below 
with the fires of hell. 

The thing lay on the boy’s shoulders, a yoke of 
flame. It outshone the silent Indian stars above, 
turned the tossing torches to smears of dull yellow, 
and sucked the glitter from the cloth of gold on 
which it lay. 

There was no time to think, to estimate, to 
appraise, scarcely a moment even to realize, for the 
conchs suddenly wailed again, the Maharaj stepped 
back into the darkness, and the doors of the temple 
were shut. 


240 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER XV. 


From smallpox and the Evil Eye, a wasteful marriage-feast, and 
the kindness of my co-wife may the gods protect my son.* | 
Hindu Proverb. 


TARVIN made his way to the banquet with his 
face aflame and his tongue dry between his teeth. 
He had seen it. It existed. It was not a myth. 
And he would have it; he would take it back with 
him. Mrs. Mutrie should hang it about the sculp- 
tured neck that looked so well when she laughed; 
and the Three C.’s should come to Topaz. He 
would be the saviour of his town; the boys at home 
would take the horses out of his carriage and drag 
him up Pennsylvania Avenue with their own hands ; 
and town lots would sell next year in Topaz by 
the running inch. 

It was worth all the waiting, worth the damming 
of a hundred rivers, worth a century of pachisi- 
playing, and a thousand miles of bullock-cart. As 
he drained a glass to the health of the young Maha- 
raj Kunwar at the banquet that evening, he renewed 


his pledge to himself to fight it out on this line 





* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 241 


if it took all summer. His pride of success had 
lain low of late, and taken many hurts; but now 
that he had seen his prize he esteemed it already 
within his grasp, as he had argued at Topaz that 
Kate must be his because he loved her. 

Next morning he woke with a confused notion 
that he stood on the threshold of great deeds; and 
then, in his bath, he wondered whence he had 
plucked the certainty and exultation of the night 
before. He had, indeed, seen the Naulahka, but 
the temple doors had closed on the vision. He 
found himself asking whether either temple or neck- 
lace had been real, and in the midst of his wonder 
and excitement was half-way to the city before he 
knew that he had left the rest-house. When he 
came to himself, however, he knew well whither 
he was going and what he was going for. If he 
had seen the Naulahka, he meant to keep it in sight. 
It hac disappeared into the temple. To the temple, 
. therefore, he would go. 

Fragments of burnt-out torches lay on the temple 
steps among trampled flowers and spilt oil, and 
the marigold garlands hung mp and wilted on 
the fat shoulders of the black stone bulls that 
guarded the inner court. Tarvin took off his white 
pith helmet Gt was very hot, though it was only 
two hours after dawn), pushed back the scanty hair 


from his high forehead, and surveyed the remnants 
R 


242 THE NAULAHKA. 


of yesterday’s feast. The city was still asleep after 
its holiday. The doors of the building were wide 
open, and he ascended the steps and walked in, 
with none to hinder. 

The formless, four-faced god Iswara, standing 
in the centre of the temple, was smeared and dis- 
colored with stains of melted butter, and the black 
smoke of exhausted incense. ‘Tarvin looked at the 
figure curiously, half expecting to find the Nau- 
lahka hung about one of its four necks. Behind 
him, in the deeper gloom of the temple, stood other 
divinities, many-handed and many-headed, tossing 
their arms aloft, protruding their tongues, and 
grinning at one another. The remains of many 
sacrifices lay about them, and in the half light 
Tarvin could see that the knees of oné were dark 
with dried blood. Overhead the dark roof ran up 
into a Hindu dome, and there was a soft rustle and 
scratching of nesting bats. 

Tarvin, with his hat on the back of his head - 
and his hands in his pockets, gazed at the image, 
looking about him and whistling softly. He had 
been a month in India, but he had not yet pene- 
trated to the interior of a temple. Standing there, 
he recognized with fresh force how entirely the 
life, habits, and traditions of this strange people 
alienated them from all that seemed good and right 
to him; and he was vaguely angered to know that 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 243 


it was the servants of these horrors who possessed a 
necklace which had power to change the destiny of 
a Christian and civilized town like Topaz. 

He knew that he would be expelled without 
ceremony for profanation, if discovered, and made 
haste to finish his investigations, with a_half- 
formed belief that the slovenliness of the race might 
have caused them to leave the Naulahka about 
somewhere, as a woman might leave her jewels on 
her dressing-table after a late return from a _ ball 
the night before. He peered about and under the 
gods, one by one, while the bats squeaked above 
him. Then he returned to the central image of 
Iswara, and in his former attitude regarded the 
idol. 

It occurred to him that, though he was on level 
ground, most of his weight was resting on his toes, 
and he stepped back to recover his balance. The 
slab of sandstone he had just quitted rolled over 
slowly as a porpoise rolls im the still sea, revealing 
for an instant a black chasm below. Then it shoul- 
dered up into its place again without a sound, and 
Tarvin wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. If 
he had found the Naulahka at that instant he would 
have smashed it in pure rage. He went out into 
the sunlight once more, devoting the country where 
such things were possible to its own gods; he could 
think of nothing worse. 


244 THE NAULAHKA. 


A priest, sprung from an unguessable retreat, 
came out of the temple immediately afterward, and 
smiled upon him. 

Tarvin, willing to renew his hold on the whole- 
some world in which there were homes and women, 
betook himself to the missionary’s cottage, where 
he invited himself to breakfast. Mr. and Mrs. 
Estes had kept themselves strictly aloof from the 
marriage ceremony, but they could enjoy Tarvin’s 
account of it, delivered from the Topaz point of 
view. Kate was unfeignedly glad to see him. She 
was full of the discreditable desertion of Dhunpat 
Rai and the hospital staff from their posts. They 
had all gone to watch the wedding festivities, and 
for three days had not appeared at the hospital. 
The entire work of the place had devolved on her- 
self and the wild woman of the desert who was 
watching her husband’s cure. Kate was very tired, 
and her heart was troubled with misgivings for the 
welfare of the little Prince, which she communi- 
cated to Tarvin when he drew her out upon the 
veranda after breakfast. 


>) 


“T’m sure he wants absolute rest now,” she said, 
almost tearfully. “He came to me at the end of 
the dinner last night—J was then in the women’s 
wing of the palace—and cried for half an hour. 
Poor little baby! It’s cruel.”: 

“Oh, well, he’ll be resting to-day. Don’t 


WOITy.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 245 


“No; to-day they take his bride back to her own 
people again, and he has to drive out with the 
procession, or something —#in this sun, too. It’s 
very wicked. Doesn’t it ever make your head 
ache, Nick? I sometimes think of you sitting out 
on that dam of yours, and wonder how you can 
bear it.” | 

“IT can bear a good deal for you, little girl,” 
returned Tarvin, looking down into her eyes. 

“Why, how is that for me, Nick?” 

“You'll see if you live long enough,” he assured 
her; but he was not anxious to discuss his dam, 
and returned to the safer subject of the Maharaj 
Kunwar. 

Next day and the day after he rode aimlessly 
about in the neighborhood of the temple, not caring 
to trust himself within its walls again, but deter- 
mined to keep his eye upon the first and last spot 
where he had seen the Naulahka. There was no 
chance at present of getting speech with the only 
living person, save the King, whom he definitely 
knew had touched the treasure. It was maddening 
to await the reappearance of the Maharaj} Kunwar 
in his barouche, but he summoned what patience 
he could. He hoped much from him; but mean- 
while he often looked in at the hospital to see 
how Kate fared. ‘The traitor Dhunpat Rai and his 
helpers had returned; but the hospital was crowded 


246 THE NAULAHKA. 


with cases from the furthest portions of the state — 
fractures caused by the King’s reckless barouches, 
and one or two cases, new in Kate’s experience, 
of men drugged, under the guise of friendship, for 
the sake of the money they carried with them, and 
left helpless in the public ways. 

Tarvin, as he cast his shrewd eye about the per- 
fectly kept men’s ward, humbly owned to himself 
that, after all, she was doing better work in Rha- 
tore than he. She at least did not run a hospital 
to cover up deeper and darker designs, and she 
had the inestimable advantage over him of having 
her goal in sight. It was not snatched from her 
after one maddening glimpse; it was not the charge 
of a mysterious priesthood, or of an impalpable 
state; it was not hidden in treacherous temples, 
nor hung round the necks of vanishing infants. 

One morning, before the hour at which he usually 
set out for the dam, Kate sent a note over to him 
at the rest-house asking him to call at the hospital 
as soon as possible. For one rapturous moment he 
dreamed of impossible things. But, smiling bit- 
terly at his readiness to hope, he ete a cigar, 
and obeyed the order. 

Kate met him on the steps, and led him into 
the dispensary. 

She laid an eager hand on his arm. “Do you 
know anything about the symptoms of none 
oning?” she asked him. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 247 


He caught her by both hands quickly, and stared 
wildly into her face. “Why? Why? Has any 
one been daring —?”’ 

She laughed nervously. “No, no. It isn’t me. 
It’s him.” 

mew Oo?” 

“The Maharaj—the child. I’m certain of it 
now.” She went on to tell him how, that morn- 
ing, the barouche, the escort, and a pompous native 
had hurried up to the missionary’s door bearing the 
almost lifeless form of the Maharaj Kunwar; how 
she had at first attributed the attack, whatever it 
might be, to exhaustion consequent upon the wed- 
ding festivities; how the little one had ‘roused from 
his stupor, blue-lipped and hollow-eyed, and had 
fallen from one convulsion into another, until she 
had begun to despair; and how, at the last, he had 
dropped into a deep sleep of exhaustion, when she 
had left him in the care of Mrs. Estes. She added 
that Mrs. Estes had believed that the young Prince 
was suffering from a return of his usual malady; 
she had seen him in paroxysms of this kind twice 
before Kate came. 

“Now look at this,” said Kate, taking down the 
chart of her hospital cases, on which were recorded 
the symptoms and progress of two cases of hemp- 
poisoning that had come to her within the past 
week. 


948 THE NAULAHKA. 


“These men,” she said, “had been given sweet- 
meats by a gang of travelling gypsies, and all their 
money was taken from them before they woke up. 
Read for yourself.” 

Tarvin read, biting his lips. At the end he 
looked up at her sharply. 

“Yes,” he said, with an emphatic nod of his 
head —“‘yes. Sitabhai?”’ 

“Who else would dare?” answered Kate, pas- 
sionately. 

“T know. I know. But how to stop her going 
on! how to bring it home to her!” 

“Tell the Maharajah,” responded Kate, decid- 
edly. 
Tarvin took her hand. “Good! Dll try it. But 
there’s no shadow of proof, you know.” 

“No matter. Remember the boy. Try. I must 
go back to him now.” 

The two returned to the house of the missionary 
together, saying very little on the way. Tarvin’s 
indignation that Kate should be mixed up in this 
miserable business almost turned to anger at Kate 
herself, as he rode beside her; but his wrath was 
extinguished at sight of the Maharaj Kunwar. 
The child lay on a bed in an inner room at the 
missionary’s, almost too weak to turn his head. 
As Kate and Tarvin entered, Mrs. Estes rose from 


giving him his medicine, said a word to Kate by 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 249 


way of report, and returned to her own work. The 
child was clothed only in a soft muslin coat; but 
his sword and jewelled belt lay across his feet. 

“Salaam, Tarvin Sahib,” he murmured. “I am 
very sorry that I was ill.” 

Tarvin bent over him tenderly. “Don’t try to 
talk, little one.” 

“Nay; I am well now,” was the answer. “Soon 
we will go riding together.” 

“Were you very sick, little man?” 

“TI cannot tell. It is all dark to me. I was in 
the palace laughing with some of the dance-girls. 
Then I fell. And after that I remember no more 
till I came here.”’ 

He gulped down the cooling draught that Kate 
gave him, and resettled himself on the pillows, 
while one wax-yellow hand played with the hilt 
of his sword. Kate was kneeling by his side, one 
arm under the pillow supporting his head; and it 
seemed to Tarvin that he had never before done 
justice to the beauty latent in her good, plain, 
strong features. The trim little figure took softer 
outlines, the firm mouth quivered, the eyes were 
filled with a light that Tarvin had never seen 
before. 

“Come to the other side —so,” said the child, 
beckoning Tarvin in the native fashion, by folding 
all his tiny fingers into his palms rapidly and 


250 THE NAULAHKA. 


repeatedly. Tarvin knelt obediently on the other 
side of the couch.. “Now I am a king, and this is 
my court.” 

Kate laughed musically in her delight at seeing 
the boy recovering strength. ‘Tarvin slid his arm 
under the pillow, found Kate’s hand there, and 
held it: 

The portiére at the door of the room dropped 
softly. Mrs. Estes had stolen in for a moment, 
and imagined that she saw enough to cause her to 
steal out again. She had been thinking a great . 
deal since the days when Tarvin first introduced 
himself. 

The child’s eyes began to grow dull and heavy, 
and Kate would have withdrawn her arm to give 
him another draught. 

“Nay; stay so,” he said imperiously; and relaps- 
ing into the vernacular, muttered thickly: “Those 
who serve the king shall not lack their reward. 
They shall have villages free of tax —three, five 
villages; Sujjain, Amet, and’Gungra. Let it be » 
entered as a free gift when they marry. They shall 
marry, and be about me always — Miss Kate and 
Tarvin Sahib.” 

Tarvin did not understand why Kate’s hand was 
withdrawn swiftly. He did not know the vernac- 
ular.as she did. 


’ 


“He is getting delirious again,” said Kate, under 


her breath. “Poor, poor little one!” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 951 


Tarvin ground his teeth, and cursed Sitabhai 
between them. Kate was wiping the damp fore- 
head, and trying to still the head as it was thrown 
restlessly from side to side. ‘Tarvin held the child’s 
hands, which closed fiercely on his own, as the boy 
was racked and convulsed by the last effects of the 
hemp. 

For some minutes he fought and writhed, calling 
upon the names of many gods, striving to reach his 
sword, and ordering imaginary regiments to hang 
those white dogs to the beams of the palace gate, 
and to smoke them to death. 

Then the crisis passed, and he began to talk to 
himself and to call for his mother. 

The vision of a little grave dug in the open 
plain sloping to the river, where they had laid out 
the Topaz cemetery, rose before Tarvin’s memory. 
They were lowering Heckler’s first baby into it, in 
its pine coffin; and Kate, standing by the grave- 
side, was writing the child’s name on the finger’s 
length of smoothed pine which was to be its only 
headstone. 

“Nay, nay, nay!” wailed the Maharaj Kunwar. 
“T am speaking the truth; and oh, I was so tired 
at that pagal dance in the temple, and I only 
crossed the court-yard.... It was a new girl 
from Lucknow; she sang the song of ‘The Green 
Pulse of Mundore.’... Yes; but only some al- 


a, THE NAULAHKA. 


mond curd. I was hungry, too. A little white 
almond curd, mother. Why should I not eat when 
I feel inclined? Am I a sweeper’s son, or a 
prince? Pick me up! pick me up! It is very hot 
inside my head. ... Louder. I do not under- 
stand. Will they take me over to Kate? She will 
make all well. What was the message?” The 
child began to wring his hands despairingly. “The 
message! the message! I have forgotten the mes- 
sage. No one in the state speaks English as I 
speak English. But I have forgotten the message. 


“Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Framed thy fearful symmetry ? 


Yes, mother; till she cries. I am to say the whole 
of it till she cries. I will not forget. I did not 
forget the first message. By the great god Har! I 
have forgotten this message.” And he began to 
cry. 

Kate, who had watched so long by bedsides of 
pain, was calm and strong; she soothed the child, 
speaking to him in a low, quieting voice, admin- 
istering a sedative draught, doing the right thing, 
as Tarvin saw, surely and steadily, undisturbed. 
It was he who was shaken by the agony that ue 
could not alleviate, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 2538 


The Maharaj Kunwar drew a long, sobbing breath, 
and contracted his eyebrows. 

“ Mahadeo ki jai!” he shouted. “It has come 
back. ‘A gypsy has done this. A gypsy has done 
this.” And I was to say it until she cried.” 

Kate half rose, with an awful look at Tarvin. 
He returned it, and, nodding, strode from the room, 
dashing the tears from his eyes. 


254 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise 
To warn a King of his enemies ? 
We know what Heaven or Hell may bring, . 
But no man knoweth the mind of the King.* 
The Ballad of the King’s Jest. 


“WANT to see the Maharajah.” 

“He cannot be seen.” 

“T shall wait until he comes.” 

“He will not be seen all day.” 

“Then I shall wait all day.” 

Tarvin settled himself comfortably in his saddle, 
and drew up in the centre of the court-yard, where 
he was wont to confer with the Maharajah. 

The pigeons were asleep in the sunlight, and the 
little fountain was talking to itself, as a pigeon 
cooes before settling to its nest. The white marble 
flagging glared like hot iron, and waves of heat 
flooded him from the green-shaded walls. The 
guardian of the gate tucked himself up in his 
sheet again and slept. And with him slept, as it 
seemed, the whole world in a welter of silence as 
intense as the heat. Tarvin’s horse champed his 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 255 


bit, and the echoes of the ringing iron tinkled from 
side to side of the court-yard. The man himself 
whipped a silk handkerchief round his neck as some 
slight protection against the peeling sunbeams, and, 
scorning the shade of the archway, waited in the 
open that the Maharajah might see there was an 
urgency in his visit. 

In a few minutes there crept out of the stillness 
a sound like the far-off rustle of wind across a 
wheat-field on a still autumn day. It came from 
behind the green shutters, and with its coming 
Tarvin mechanically straightened himself in the 
saddle. It grew, died down again, and at last 
remained fixed in a continuous murmur for which 
the ear strained uneasily —such a murmur as _ her- 
alds the advance of a loud racing tide in a night- 
mare, when the dreamer cannot flee nor declare his 
terror in any voice but a whisper. After the rustle 
came the smell of jasmine and musk that Tarvin 
knew well. 

The palace wing had wakened from its afternoon 
siesta, and was looking at him with a hundred 
eyes. He felt the glances that he could not see, 
and they filled him with wrath as he sat immoy- 
able, while the horse swished at the flies. Some- 
body behind the shutters yawned a_ polite little 
yawn. ‘Tarvin chose to regard it as an insult, and 
resolved to stay where he was till he or the horse 


256 THE NAULAHKA. 


dropped. The shadow of the afternoon sun crept 
across the court-yard inch by inch, and wrapped 
him at last in stifling shade. 

There was a muffled hum—quite distinct from 
the rustle —of voices within the palace. A little 
ivory-inlaid door opened, and the Maharajah rolled 
into the court-yard. He was in the ughest muslin 
undress, and his little saffron-colored Rajput turban 
was set awry on his head, so that the emerald 
plume tilted drunkenly. His eyes were red with 
opium, and he walked as a bear walks when he is 
overtaken by the dawn in the poppy-field, where he 
has gorged his fill through the night-watches. 

Tarvin’s face darkened at the sight, and the 
Maharajah, catching the look, bade his attendants 
stand back out of earshot. 

“Have you been waiting long, Tarvin Sahib?” 
he asked huskily, with an air of great good will. 
“You know I see no man at this afternoon hour, 


and 





and they did not bring me the news.” 

“T can wait,” said Tarvin, composedly. 

The King seated himself in the broken Windsor 
chair, which was splitting in the heat, and eyed 
Tarvin suspiciously. 

“Have they given you enough convicts from the 
jails? Why are you not°on the dam, then, instead 
of breaking my rest? By God! is a king to have 
no peace because of you and such as you?” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. AY | 


Tarvin let this outburst go by without comment. 

“IT have come to you about the Maharaj Kun- 
war,” he said quietly. 

“What of him?” said the Maharajah, quickly. 
“T—]J]—have not seen him for some days.” 

“Why?” asked Tarvin, bluntly. 

“ Affairs of state and urgent political necessity,” 
murmured the King, evading Tarvin’s wrathful 
eyes. “Why should I be troubled by these things, 
when I know that no harm has come to the boy?” 

“No harm!” 

“How could harm arrive?” The voice dropped 
into an almost conciliatory whine. “You yourself, 
Tarvin Sahib, promised to be his true friend. 
That was on the day you rode so well, and stood 
so well against my body-guard. Never have I 
seen such riding, and therefore why should I be 
troubled? Let us drink.” 

He beckoned to his attendants. One of them 
came forward with a long silver tumbler concealed 
beneath his flowing garments, and poured into it 
an allowance of liqueur brandy that made Tarvin, 
used to potent drinks, open his eyes. The second 
man produced a bottle of champagne, opened it 
with a skill born of long practice, and filled up 
the tumbler with the creaming wine. | 

The Maharajah drank deep, and wiped the foam 


from his beard, saying apologetically: “Such things 
- 


258 THE NAULAHKA. 


are not for political agents to see; but you, Sahib, 
are true friend of the state. Therefore I let you 
see. Shall they mix you one like this?” 

“Thanks. I didn’t come here to drink. I came 
to tell you that the Maharaj has been very ill.” 

“T was told there was a little fever,” said the 
King, leaning back in his chair. “But he is with 
Miss Sheriff, and she will make all well. Just a 
little fever, Tarvin Sahib. Drink with me.” 

“A little hell! Can you understand what I 
am saying? The little chap has been half pois- 


99 


oned. 


> said the 


“Then it was the English medicines,’ 
Maharajah, with a bland smile. ‘Once they made 
me very sick, and I went back to the native 
hakims. You are always making funny talks, Tar- 
vin Sahib.” 

With a mighty effort Tarvin choked down his 
rage, and tapped his foot with his riding-whip, 
speaking very clearly and distinctly: “I haven’t 
come here to make funny talk to-day. The little 
chap is with Miss Sheriff now. He was driven 
over there; and somebody in the palace has been 
trying to poison him with hemp.” 

“Bhang!” said the Maharajah, stupidly. 

“T don’t know what you call the mess, but he 
has been poisoned. But for Miss Sheriff he would 
have died—gyour first son would have died. He 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 259 


has been poisoned, — do you hear, Maharajah Sahib? 
—and by some one in the palace.” 

“He has eaten something bad, and it has saan 
him sick,” said the King, surlily. “Little boys 
eat anything. By God! no man would dare to lay 
a finger on my son.” 

“What would you do to prevent it?” 

The Maharajah half rose to his feet, and his 
red eyes filled with fury. “I would tie him to 
the fore foot of my biggest elephant, and kill him 
through an afternoon!” ‘Then he relapsed, foam- 
ing, into the vernacular, and poured out a list of 
the hideous tortures that were within his will but 
not in his power to inflict. “I would do all these 
things to any man who touched him,” he con- 
cluded. 

Tarvin smiled incredulously. 

“T know what you think,” stormed the King, 
maddened by the liquor and the opium. “You 
think that because there is an English government 
I can make trials only by law, and all that non- 
sense. Stuff! What do I care for the law that 
is in books? Will the walls of my palace tell 
anything that I do?” 

“They won’t. If they did, they might let you 
know that it is a woman inside the palace who is 
at the bottom of this.” 

The Maharajah’s face turned gray under its 


260 THE NAULAHKA. 


brown. Then he burst forth anew, almost huskily: 
“Am I a king or a potter that I must have the 
affairs of my zenana dragged into the sunlight 
by any white dog that chooses to howl at me? 
Go out, or the guard will drive you out like a 
jackal.” 

“'That’s all right,” said Tarvin, calmly. “But 
what has it to do with the Prince, Maharajah 
Sahib? Come over to Mr. Estes’s, and I’ll show 
you. You’ve had some experience of drugs, I sup- 
pose. You can decide for yourself. The boy has 
been poisoned.” 

“Tt was an accursed day for my state when I first 
allowed the missionaries to come, and a worse day 
when I did not drive you out.” 

“Not in the least. I’m here to look after the 
Maharaj Kunwar, and I’m going to do it. You 
prefer leaving him to be killed by your women.” 

“Tarvin Sahib, do you know what you say?” 

“Shouldn’t be saying it if I didn’t. I have all 
the proof in my hands.” 

“But when there is a poisoning there are no 
proofs of any kind, least of all when a woman 
poisons! One does justice on suspicion, and by 
the English law it is a most illiberal policy to kill 
on suspicion. Tarvin Sahib, the English have 
taken away from me everything that a Rajput 
desires. and I and the others are rolling in idle- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 261 


ness like horses that never go to exercise. But 
at least I am master there!” 

He waved a hand toward the green shutters, and 
spoke in a lower key, dropping back into his chair, 
and closing his eyes. 

Tarvin looked at him despairingly. 

“No one man would dare —no man would dare,” 
murmured the Maharajah, more faintly. “And as 
for the other thing that you spoke of, it is not in 
your power. By God! I am a Rajput and a king. 
I do not talk of the life behind the curtain.” 

Then Tarvin took his courage in both hands 
and spoke. 

“I don’t want you to talk,” he said; “I merely 
want to warn you against Sitabhai. She’s poison- 
ing the Prince.” 

The Maharajah shuddered. That a European 
should mention the name of his queen was in itself 
sufficient insult, and one beyond all his experience. 
But that a European should cry aloud in the open 
court-yard a charge such as Tarvin had just made 
surpassed imaginations The Maharajah had just 
come from Sitabhai, who had lulled him to rest 
with songs and endearments sacred to him alone; 
and here was this lean outlander assailing her with 
vile charges. But for the drugs he would, in the 
extremity of his rage, have fallen upon ‘Tarvin, 
who was saying, “I can prove it quite enough to 
satisfy Colonel Nolan.” 


262 THE NAULAHKA. 


The Maharajah stared at Tarvin with shiny eyes, 
and Tarvin thought for a moment that he was 
going to fall in a fit; but it was the drink and 
the opium reasserting their power upon him. He 
mumbled angrily. The head fell forward, the 
words ceased, and he sat in his chair breathing 
heavily, as senseless as a log. 

Tarvin gathered up his reins, and watehod the 
sodden monarch for a long time in silence, as 
the rustle behind the shutters rose and fell. Then 
he turned to go, and rode out through the arch, 
thinking. 

Something sprang out of the darkness where the 
guard slept, and where the King’s fighting apes 
were tethered; and the horse reared as a gray ape, 
its chain broken at the waistband, flung itself on 
the pommel of the saddle, chattering. Tarvin felt 
and smelt the beast. It thrust one paw into the 
horse’s mane, and with the other encircled his own 
throat. Instinctively he reached back, and before 
the teeth under the grimy blue gums had time 
to close he had fired twice, pressing the muzzle of 
the pistol into the hide. The creature rolled off 
to the ground, moaning like a human being, and 
the smoke of the two shots drifted back through 
the hollow of the arch and dissolved in the open 
court-yard. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 263 


CHAPTER XVII. 


Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed 


were we. 
I was the Lord of the Inca Race, ANI she was the Queen of the 
Sea. 
Under the stars beyond our stars where the reinless meteors glow, 
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago. 


Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above — 

Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we 
spurned and we strove — 

Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside and scattered them to and 


fro, 
The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago. 


She with the star I had marked for my own—I with my set de- 
sire — 
Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights, ’wildered by worlds afire — 
Met in a war ’twixt love and hate where the reinless meteors glow, 
Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago.* 
The Sack of the Gods. 


InN summer the nights of the desert are hotter 
than the days, for when the sun goes down earth, 
masonry, and marble give forth their stored heat, 
and the low clouds, promising rain and never 
bringing it, allow nothing to escape. 

Tarvin was lying at rest in the veranda of the 
rest-house, smoking a cheroot and wondering how 





* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 


264 THE NAULAHKA. 


far he had bettered the case of the Maharaj Kunwar 
by appealing to the Maharajah. His reflections 
were not disturbed; the last of the commercial 
travelers had gone back to Calcutta and Bombay, 
erumbling up to the final moment of their stay, 
and the rest-house was all his own. Surveying 
his kingdom, he meditated, between the puffs of 
his cheroot, on the desperate and apparently hope- 
less condition of things.. They had got to the 
precise point where he liked them. When a situa- 
tion looked as this one did, only Nicholas Tarvin 
could put it through and come out on top. Kate 
was obdurate; the Naulahka was damnably coy; the 
Maharajah was ready to turn him out of the state. 
Sitabhai had heard him denounce her. His life 
was likely to come to a sudden and mysterious 
end, without so much as the satisfaction of know- 
ing that Heckler and the boys would avenge him; 
and if it went on, it looked as though it would 
have to go on without Kate, and without the gift of 
new life to Topaz—in other words, without being 
worth the trouble of living. 

The moonlight, shining on the city beyond the 
sands, threw fantastic shadows on temple spires and 
the watch-towers along the walls. A dog in search 
of food snuffed dolefully about Tarvin’s chair, and 
withdrew to howl at him at a distance. It was a 
singularly melancholy howl. Tarvin smoked till 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 265 


the moon went down in the thick darkness of an 
Indian night. She had scarcely set when he was 
aware of something blacker than the night. between 
him and the horizon. 

“Ts it you, Tarvin Sahib?” the voice inquired 
in broken English. 

Tarvin sprang to his feet before replying. He 
was beginning to be a little suspicious of fresh 
apparitions. His hand went to his hip-pocket. 
Any horror, he argued, might jump out at him 
from the darkness in a country managed on the 
plan of a Kiralfy trick spectacle. 

“Nay; do not be afraid,” said the voice. “It 
is I—Juggut Singh.” 

Tarvin pulled thoughtfully at his cigar. ‘The 
state is full of Singhs,” he said. “ Which?” 

“T, Juggut Singh, of the household of the Maha- 
rajah.” > 
“H’m. Does the King want to see me?” 

The figure advanced a pace nearer. 

“No, Sahib; the Queen.” 

“Which?” repeated Tarvin. 

The figure was in the veranda at his side, almost 
whispering in his ear. “There is only one who 
would dare to leave the palace. It is the Gypsy.” 

Tarvin snapped his fingers blissfully and sound- 
lessly in the dark, and made a little click of tri- 
umph with his tongue. “Pleasant calling-hours 
the lady keeps,” he said. 


°66 THE NAULAHKA. 


“This is no place for speaking, Sahib. I was 
to say, ‘Come, unless you are afraid of the dark.’ ” 

“Oh, were you? Well, now, look here, Juggut; 
let’s talk this thing out. I’d like to see your 
friend Sitabhai. Where are you keeping her? 
Where do you want me to go?” 

“T was to say, “Come with me.’ Are ‘you 
afraid?”? ‘The man spoke this time at his own 
prompting. 

“Oh, I’m afraid fast enough,” said Tarvin, blow- 
ing a cloud of smoke from him. “It isn’t that.” 

“There are horses—-very swift horses. It is 
the Queen’s order. Come with me.” 

Tarvin smoked on, unhurrying; and when he 
finally picked himself out of the chair it was muscle 
by muscle. He drew his revolver from his pocket, 
turned the chambers slowly one after another to 
the vague light, under Juggut.Singh’s watchful 
eye, and returned it to his pocket again, giving 
his companion a wink as he did so. 

“Well, come on, Juggut,’” he said, and they 
passed behind the rest-house to a spot where two 
horses, their heads enveloped in cloaks to prevent 
them from neighing, were waiting at their pickets. 
The man mounted one, and Tarvin took the other 
silently, satisfying himself before getting into the 
saddle that the girths were not loose this time. 
They left the city road at a walking pace by a 
eart-track leading to the hills. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 267 


“Now,” said Juggut Singh, after they had gone 
a quarter of a mile in this fashion, and were alone 
under the stars, “we can ride.” 

He bowed forward, struck his stirrups home, and 
began lashing his animal furiously. Nothing short 
of the fear of death would have made the pampered 
eunuch of the palace ride at this pace. Tarvin 
watched him roll in the saddle, chuckled a little, 
and followed. 

“You wouldn’t make much of a cow-puncher, 
Jugget, would you?” 

“Ride,” gasped Juggut Singh, “for the cleft 
between the two hills —ride!” 

The dry sand flew behind their horses’ hoofs, and 
the hot winds whistled about their ears as they 
headed up the easy slope toward the hills, three 
miles from the palace. In the old days, before 
the introduction of telegraphs, the opium specula- 
tors of the desert were wont to telegraph the rise 
and fall in the price of the drug from little beacon- 
towers on the hills. It was toward one of these 
disused stations that Juggut Singh was straining. 
The horses fell into. a walk as the slope orew 
steeper, and the outline of the squat-domed tower 
began to show clear against the sky. A few mo- 
ments later Tarvin heard the hoofs of their horses 
ring on solid marble, and saw that he was riding 
near the edge of a great reservoir, full of water to 


the lip. 


268 THE NAULAHKA. 


Eastward, a few twinkling lghts in the open 
plain showed the position of Rhatore, and took 
him back to the night when he had said good by 
to Topaz from the rear platform of a Pullman. 
Night-fowl called to one another from the weeds 
at the far end of the tank, and a great fish leaped 
at the reflection of a star. 

“The watch-tower is at the further end of the 
dam,” said Juggut Singh. “The Gypsy is there.” 

“Will they never have done with that name?” 
uttered an incomparably sweet voice out of the 
darkness. “It is well that I am of a gentle 
temper, or the fish would know more of thee, Juggut 
Singh.” » 

Tarvin checked his horse with a jerk, for almost 
under his bridle stood a figure enveloped from head — 
to foot in a mist of pale-yellow gauze. It had 
started up from behind the red tomb of a once 
famous Rajput cavalier who was supposed by the 
country-side to gallop nightly round the dam he 
had built. This was one of the reasons why the 
Dungar Talao was not visited after nightfall. 

“Come down, Tarvin Sahib,” said the voice 
mockingly in English. “IJ, at least, am not a 
gray ape. Juggut Singh, go wait with the horses 


99 


below the watch-tower. 


“Yes, Juggut; and don’t go to sleep,” enjoined 
Tarvin —“we might want you.” He alighted, 


and stood before the veiled form of Sitabhai. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 269 


_“Shekand,” she said, after a little pause, putting . 
out a hand that was smaller even than Kate’s. 
“Ah, Sahib, I knew that you would come. I knew 
that you were not afraid.” 

She held his hand as she spoke, and pressed it~ 
tenderly. Tarvin buried the tiny hand deep in 
his engulfing paw, and, pressing it in a grip that 
made her give an involuntary cry, shook it with 
a hearty motion. 

“Happy to make your acquaintance,” he said, 
as she murmured under her breath, “By Indur, 
he has a hold!” 


“And I am pleased to see you, too,’ 


‘che an- 


swered aloud. Tarvin noted the music of the 
voice. He wondered what the face behind the veil 
might look like. 

She sat down composedly on the slab of the 
tomb, motioning him to a seat beside her. 

“All white men like straight talk,” she said, 
speaking slowly, and with uncertain mastery «of 
English pronunciation. “Tell me, Tarvin Sahib, 
how much you know.” 

She withdrew her veil as she spoke, and turned 
her face toward him. ‘Tarvin saw that she was 
beautiful. The perception thrust itself insensibly 
between him and his other perceptions about her. 

“You don’t want me to give myself away, do 
you, Queen?” 


270 THE NAULAHKA. 


“T do not understand. But I know you do not 


9 


talk like the other white men,” she said sweetly. 

“Well, then, you don’t expect me to tell you 
the truth?” 

“No,” she replied. “Else you would tell me 
why you are here. Why do you give me so much 
trouble?” 

“Do I trouble you?” 

Sitabhai laughed, throwing back her head, and 
clasping her hands behind her neck. Tarvin watched 
her curiously in the starlight. All his senses were 
alert; he was keenly on his guard, and he cast a 
wary eye about and behind him from time to time. 
But he could see nothing but the dull glimmer of 
the water that lapped at the foot of the marble 
steps, and hear nothing save the cry of the night- 
owls. 

“Q Tarvin Sahib,” she said. “You know! 
After the first time I was sorry.” 

“Which time was that?” inquired Tarvin, 
vaguely. 

“ Of course it was when the saddle turned. And 
then when the timber fell from the archway I 
thought at least that I had maimed your horse. 
Was he hurt?” 

“No,” said Tarvin, stupefied by her engaging 
frankness. 


’ 


“Surely you knew,’ 
fully. 


she said almost reproach. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. para | 


He shook his head. “No, Sitabhai, my dear,” 
he said slowly and impressively; “I wasn’t on to 
you, and it’s my eternal shame. But I’m begin- 
ning to sabe. You worked the little business at 
the dam, too, I suppose, and the bridge and the 
bullock-carts. And I thought it was their infernal 
clumsiness! Well, I'll be—” He whistled melo- 
diously, and the sound was answered by the hoarse 
croak of a crane across the reeds. 

The Queen leaped to her feet, thrusting her 
hand into her bosom. “A signal!” Then, sink- 
ing back upon the slab of the tomb, “ But you have 
brought no one with you. I know you are not 
afraid to go alone.” 

“Oh, I’m not trying to do you up, young lady,” 
he answered. “I’m too busy admiring your pic- 
turesque and systematic deviltry. So you’re at 
the bottom of all my troubles? That quicksand 
trick was a pretty one. Do you often work it?” 

“Oh, on the dam!” exclaimed the Queen, wav- 

ing her hands lightly. “I only gave them orders 
to do what they could. But they are very clumsy 
people — only coolie people. They told me what 
they had done, and I was angry.” 

“Kill any one?” 

“No; why should I?” 

“Well, if it comes to that, why should you be 
so hot on killing me?” inquired Tarvin, dryly. 


ote THE NAULAHKA. 


“T do not like any white men to stay here, and 
J knew that you had come to stay.” Tarvin smiled 
at the unconscious Americanism. “ Besides,” she 
went on, “the Maharajah was fond of you, and I had 
never killed a white man. Then, too, I like you.” 

“Oh!” responded Tarvin, expressively. 

“By Malang Shah, and you never knew!” She 
was swearing: by the god of her own clan—the 
god of the gypsies. 

“Well, don’t rub it in,” said Tarvin. 

“And you killed my big pet ape,” she went 
on. “He used to salaam to me in the mornings 
like Luchman Rao, the prime minister. Tarvin 
Sahib, I have known many Englishmen. I have 
danced on the slack-rope before the mess-tents of 
the officers on the line of march, and taken my 
little begging-gourd up to the big bearded colonel 
when I was no higher than his knee.” She low- 
ered her hand to within a foot of the ground. 
“And when I grew older,” she continued, “I 
thought that I knew the hearts of all men. But, 
by Malang Shah, Tarvin Sahib, I never saw a man 
like unto you! Nay,” she went on almost beseech- 
ingly, “do not say that you did not know. ‘There 
is a love-song in my tongue, ‘I have not slept 
between moon and moon because of you’; and 
indeed for me that song is quite true. Sometimes 


I think that I did not quite wish to see you die. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Din 


But it would be better that you were dead. I, 
and I alone, command this state. And now, after 
that which you have told the King —” 

“Yes? You heard, then?” 

She nodded. “After that I cannot see that there 
is any other way —unless you go away.” 

“Tm not going,” said Tarvin. 

“That is good,” said the Queen, with a little 
laugh. “And so I shall not miss seeing you in 
the court-yard day by day. I thought the sun 
would have killed you when you waited for the 
Maharajah. Be grateful to me, Tarvin Sahib, for 
I made the Maharajah come out. And you did me 
an ill turn.” 

“My dear young lady,” said Tarvin, earnestly, 
“if you’d pull in your wicked little fangs, no 
one wants to hurt you. But I can’t let you beat 
me about the Maharaj Kunwar. I’m here to see 
that the young man stays with us. Keep off the 
erass, and I'll drop it.” 


99 


“Again I do not understand,” said the Queen, 


bewildered. “But what is the life of a little child 
to you who are a stranger here?” 

“What is it to me? Why, it’s fair play; it’s 
the life of a little child. What more do you 
want? Is nothing sacred to you?” 


> 


“T also have a son,” returned the Queen, “and 


he is not weak. Nay, J'arvin Sahib, the child 


— 


274 THE NAULAHKA. 


always was sickly from his birth. How can he 
govern men? My son will be a Rajput; and in 
the time to come— But that is no concern of 
the white men. Let this little one go back to the 
gods.” 

“Not if I know it,” responded Tarvin, deci- 
sively. 

“ Otherwise,” swept on the Queen, “he will live 
infirm and miserable for ninety years. I know the 
bastard Kulu stock that he comes from. Yes; I 
have sung at the gate of his mother’s palace when 
she and I were children—TI in the dust, and she 
in her marriage-litter. To-day she is in the dust. 
Tarvin Sahib,’’—her voice melted appealingly, — 
“IT shall never bear another son; but’I may at 
least mould the state from behind the curtain, as 
many queens have done. I am not a palace-bred 
woman. Those”—she pointed scornfully toward 
the lights of Rhatore — “have never seen the wheat 
wave, or heard the wind blow, or sat in a saddle, 
or talked face to face with men in the streets. 
They call me the gypsy, and they cower under 
their robes like fat slugs when I choose to lift my 
hand to the Maharajah’s beard. Their bards sing 
of their ancestry for twelve hundred years. They 
are noble, forsooth! By Indur and Allah, — yea, 
and the God of your missionaries too, — their chil- 
dren and the British government shall remember 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 275 


me for twice twelve hundred years. Ahi, Tarvin 
Sahib, you do not know how wise my little son 
is. I do not let him go to the missionary’s. All 
that he shall need afterward—and indeed it is 
no little thing to govern this state — he shall learn 
from me; for I have seen the world, and I know. 
And until you came all was going so softly, so 
softly, to its end! The little one would have died 
—yes; and there would have been no more trouble. 
And never man nor woman in the: palace would 
have breathed to the King one word of what you 
cried aloud before the sun in the court-yard. Now, 
suspicion will never cease in the King’s mind, 
and I do not know—I do not know—” She 
bent forward earnestly. “Tarvin Sahib, if I have 
spoken one word of truth this night, tell me how 
much is known to you.” 

Tarvin preserved absolute silence. She stole one 
hand pleadingly on his knee. “And none would 
have suspected. When the ladies of the Viceroy 
came last year, I gave out of my own treasures 
twenty-five thousand rupees to the nursing-hospi- 
tal, and the lady sahib kissed me on both cheeks, 
and I talked English, and showed them how I 
spent my time knitting—I who knit and unknit 
the hearts of men.” 

This time Tarvin did not whistle; he merely 
smiled and murmured sympathetically. The large 


276 THE NAULAHKA. 


and masterly range of her wickedness, and the 
coolness with which she addressed herself to it, 
gave her a sort of distinction. More than this, 
he respected her for the personal achievement which 
of all feats most nearly appeals to the breast of the 
men of the West—she had done him up. It was 
true her plans had failed; but she had played them 
all on him without his knowledge. He almost 
revered her for it. 

“Now you begin to understand,” said Sitabhai; 
“there is something more to think of. Do you 
mean to go to Colonel Nolan, Sahib, with all your 
story about me?” 

“Unless you keep your hands off the Maharaj 
Kunwar — yes,” said Tarvin, not allowing his feel- 
ings to interfere with business. 

“That is very foolish,” said the Queen; “ because 
Colonel Nolan will give much trouble to the King, 
and the King will turn the palace into confusion, 
and every one of my handmaids, except a. few, 
will give witness against me; and I perhaps shall 
come to be much suspected. Then you would 
think, Tarvin Sahib, that you had prevented me. 
But you cannot stay here forever. You cannot 
stay here until I die. And so soon as you are 
gone —”’ She snapped her fingers. 

“You won’t get the chance,” said Tarvin, un- 
shakenly. “Ill fix that. What do you take me 
for?” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Ott 


The Queen bit the back of her forefinger irres: 
olutely. There was no saying what this man, 
who strode unharmed through her machinations, 
might or might not be able to do. Had she been 
dealing with one of her own race, she would have 
played threat against threat. But the perfectly 
composed and loose-knit figure by her side, watch- 
ing every movement, chin in hand, ready, alert, 
confident, was an unknown quantity that baffled 
and distressed her. 

There was a sound of a discreet cough, and 
Juggut Singh waddled toward them, bowing ab- 
jectly, to whisper something to the Queen. She 
laughed scornfully, and motioned him back to his 
post. 

“He says the night is passing,” she explained, 
“and it is death for him and for me to be without 
the palace.” 

“Don’t let me keep you,” said Tarvin, rising. 
“T think we understand each other.” He looked 
into her eyes. ‘“ Hands off!” 

“Then I may not do what I please?” she said, 
“and you will go to Colonel Nolan to-morrow?” 

“That depends,” said Tarvin, shutting his lips. 
He thrust his hand into his pockets as he stood 
looking down at her. 

“Seat yourself again a moment, Tarvin Sahib,” 
said Sitabhai, patting the slab of the tomb invit- 


278 THE NAULAHKA. 


ingly with her little palm. Tarvin obeyed. “Now, 
if I let no more timber fall, and keep the gray 
apes tied fast —” 

“And dry up the quicksands in the Amet River,” 
pursued Tarvin, grimly. “I see. My dear little 
spitfire, you are at liberty to do what you like. 
Don’t let me interfere with your amusements.” 

“T was wrong. I should have known that noth- 
ing would make you afraid,” said she, eying him 


pAlld. 


thoughtfully out of the corner of her eye; 
excepting you, Tarvin Sahib, there is no man that 
I fear. If you were a king as I a queen, we would 
hold Hindustan between our two hands.” 

She clasped his locked fist as she spoke, and 
Tarvin, remembering that sudden motion to her 
bosom when he had whistled, laid his own hand 
quickly above hers, and held them fast. 

“Ts there nothing, Tarvin Sahib, that would 
make you leave me in peace? What is it you 
care for? You did not come here to keep the 
Mahara} Kunwar alive.” 

“How do you know I didn’t?” 

“You are very wise,’ she said, with a little 
laugh, “but it is not good to pretend to be too 
wise. Shall I tell you why you came?” 

“Well, why did I? Speak up.” 

“You came here, as you came to the temple of 
Iswara, to find that which you will never find, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 279 


unless **—she leaned toward him—“T help you. 
Was it very cold in the Cow’s Mouth, Tarvin 
Sahib?” 

Tarvin drew back, frowning, but not betraying 
himself further. 

“T was afraid that the snakes would have killed 
you there.” 

“ Were you?” 

“Yes,” she said softly, “And I was afraid, 
too, that you might not have stepped swiftly 
enough for the turning stone in the temple.” 

Tarvin glanced at her. “No?” 

“Yes. Ah! I knew what was in your mind, 
even before you spoke to the King—when the 
body-guard charged.” 

“See here, young woman, do you run a private 
inquiry agency?” 

She laughed. “There is a song in the palace 
now about your bravery. But the boldest thing 
was to speak to the King about the Naulahka. He 
told me all you said. But he—even he did not 
dream that any feringhi could dare to covet it. 
And I was so good —I did not tell him. But I 
knew men like you are not made for little things. 
Tarvin Sahib,” she said, leaning close, releasing 
her hand and laying it softly on his shoulder, 
“you and I are kin indeed! For it is more easy 
to govern this state—aye, and from this state to 


280 THE NAULAHKA. 


recapture all Hindustan from these white dogs, the 
English —than to do what you have dreamed of. 
And yet a stout heart makes all things easy. Was 
it for yourself, Tarvin Sahib, that you wanted the 
Naulahka, or for another—even as I desire Gokral 
Seetarun for my son? We are not little people. 
It is for another, is it not?” 

“Look here,”’ said Tarvin, reverently, as he took 
her hand from his shoulder and held it firmly in 
his clutch again, “are there many of you in India?” 

“But one. I am like yourself—alone.” Her 
chin drooped against his shoulder, and she looked 
up at him out of her eyes as dark as the lake. 
The scarlet mouth and the quivering nostrils were 
so close to his own that the fragrant breath swept 
his cheek. 

“Are you making states, Tarvin Sahib, like me? 
No; surely it is a woman. Your government is 
decreed for you, and you do what it orders. I 
turned the canal which the Government said should 
run through my orange-garden, even as I will 
bend the King to my will, even as I will kill the 
boy, even as I will myself rule in Gokral Seetarun 
through my child. But you, Tarvin Sahib — you 
wish only a woman! Is it not so? And she is 
too little to bear the weight of the Luck of the 
State. She grows paler day by day.” She felt 
the man quiver, but he said nothing. | 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 281 


From the tangle of scrub and brushwood at the 
far end of the lake broke forth a hoarse barking 
cough that filled the hills with desolation as water 
brims a cup. Tarvin leaped to his feet. For the 
first time he heard the angry complaint of the tiger 
going home to his:lair after a fruitless night of 
ranging. 

“Tt is nothing,” said the Queen, without stir- 
ring. “It is only the tiger of the Dungar Talao. 
I have heard them howling many times when 1 
was a gypsy, and even if he came you would shoot 
him, would you not, as you shot the ape?” 

She nestled close to him, and, as he sank beside 
her on the stone again, his arm slipped uncon- 
sciously about her waist. 

The shadow of the beast drifted across an open 
space by. the lake-shore as noiselessly as thistle- 
down draws through the air of summer, and Tar- 
vin’s arm tightened in its resting-place — tightened 
on a bossed girdle that struck cold on his palm 
through many folds of muslin. 

“So little and so frail—how could she wear 
it?” resumed the Queen. 

She turned a little in his embrace, and Tarvin’s 
‘ arm brushed against one, and another, and then 
another, strand of the girdle, studded like the first 
with irregular bosses, till under his elbow he felt 
a great square stone. 


282 THE NAULAHKA. 


He started, and tightened his hold about her 
waist, with paling lips. 


a2) 


“But we two,” the Queen went on, in a low 
voice, regarding him dreamily, “could make the 
kingdom fight like the water-buffaloes in spring. 
Would you be my prime minister, Tarvin Sahib, 
and advise me through the curtain?” 

“T don’t know whether I could trust you,” 
said Tarvin, briefly. 

“IT do not know whether I could trust myself,” 
responded the Queen; “for after a time it might 
be that I should be servant who have always been 
queen. I have come near to casting my heart 
under the hoofs of your horse —not once, but many 


’ 


times.”” She put her arms around his neck and 
joined them there, gazing into his eyes, and draw- 
ing his head down to hers. “Is it a little thing,” 
she cooed, “if I ask you to be my king? In the 
old days, before the English came, Englishmen of 
no birth stole the hearts of begums, and led their 
armies. They were kings in all but the name. 
We do not know when the old days may return, 
and we might lead our armies together.” 

“All right. Keep the place open for me. I 
might come back and apply for it one of these © 
days when I’ve worked a scheme or two at home.” 

“Then you are going away— you will leave us 


soon?” 


A STORY OF WEST AND BAST. 283 


“T’ll leave you when I’ve got what I want, my 
dear,” he answered, pressing her closer. 

She bit her lip. “I might have known,” she 
said softly. “I, too, have never turned aside 
from anything I desired. Well, and what is it?” 

The mouth drooped a little at the corners, as 
the head fell on his shoulder. Glancing down, 
he saw the ruby-jewelled jade handle of a little 
knife at her breast. 

He disengaged himself from her arms with a 
quick movement, and rose to his feet. She was 
very lovely ashe stretched her arms appealingly 
out to him in the half light; but he was there for 
other things. 

Tarvin looked at. her between the eyes, and her 
glance fell. 

“T’l] take what you have around your waist, 
please.” 

“T might have known that the white man thinks 
only of money!” she cried scornfully. 

She unclasped a silver belt from her waist and 
threw it from her, clinking, upon the marble. 

Tarvin did not give it a glance. 

“You know me better than that,” he said quietly. 
“Come, hold up your hands. Your game is 
played.” 

“T do not understand,” she said. “Shall I give 
you some rupees?” she asked scornfully. “Be 
quick, Juggut Singh is bringing the horses.”’ 


284 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Oh, [I'll be quick enough. Give me the Nau- 
lahka.”’ 

“The Naulahka?” 

“The same. I’m tired of tipsy bridges, and 
ungirt horses, and uneasy arches, and dizzy quick- 
sands. I want the necklace.” 

“And I may have the boy?” 

“No; neither boy nor necklace.” 

“And will you go to Colonel Nolan in the 
morning?” 

“The morning is here now. You’d better be 
quick.” 

“Will you go to Colonel Nolan?” she repeated, 
rising, and facing him. 

“Yes; if you don’t give me the necklace.” 

ATO Ee Giees 

“No. Is it a trade?” It was his question: to 
Mrs. Mutrie. 

The Queen looked desperately at the day-star 
shat was beginning to pale in the East. Even her 
power over the King could not save her from death 
if the day discovered her beyond the palace walls. 

The man spoke as one who held her life in the 
hollow of his hand; and she knew he was right. 
If he had proof he would not scruple to bring it 
before the Maharajah; and if the Maharajah be- 
lieved —Sitabhai could feel the sword at her throat. 
She would be no founder of a dynasty, but a name- 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 285 


less disappearance in the palace. Mercifully, the 
King had not been in a state to understand the 
charges Tarvin had brought against her in the 
court-yard. But she lay open now to anything 
this reckless and determined stranger might choose 
to do against her. At the least he could bring 
upon her the formless suspicion of an Indian court, 
worse than death to her plans, and the removal 
of Maharaj Kunwar beyond her power, through the 
interposition of Colonel Nolan; and at the worst — 
But she did not pursue this train of thought. 

She cursed the miserable weakness of liking for 
him which had prevented her from killing him just 
now as he lay in her arms. She had meant to 
kill him from the first moment of their interview; 
she had let herself toy too long with the fascina- 
tion of being dominated by a will stronger than 
her own, but there was still time. 

“And if I do not give you the Naulahka?” 
she asked. 

“T guess you know best about that.” 

As her eye wandered out on the plain she saw 
that the stars no longer had fire in them; the black 
water of the reservoir paled and grew gray, and 
the wild fowl were waking in the reeds. The 
dawn was upon her, as merciless as the man 
Juggut Singh was leading up the horses, motion. 
ing to her in an agony of impatience and terror. 


286 THE NAULAHKA. 


The sky was against her; and there was no help 
on earth. 

She put her hands behind her. Tarvin heard 
the snap of a clasp, and the Naulahka lay about 
her feet in ripples of flame. 

Without looking at him or the necklace, she 
moved toward the horses. Tarvin stooped swiftly 
aud possessed himself of the treasure. Juggut 
Singh had released his horse. ‘Tarvin strode for- 
ward and caught at the bridle, cramming the 
necklace into his brea.t-pocket. 

He bent to make sure of his girth. The Queen, 
standing behind her horse, waited an instant to 
mount. | 

“Good by, Tarvin Sahib; and remember the 
gypsy,” she said, flinging her arm out over the 
horse’s withers. “ Heh!” 

A fiicker of light passed his eye. The jade 
handle of the Queen’s knife quivered in the saddle- 


9 


flap half an inch above his right shoulder. His 
horse plunged forward at the Queen’s stallion, 
with a snort of pain. 

“Kill him, Juggut Singh!” gasped the Queen, 
pointing to Tarvin, as the eunuch scrambled into 
his saddle. “Kill him!” 

Tarvin caught her tender wrist in his fast grip. 
“Easy there, girl! Easy!” She returned his gaze, 
baffled. “Let me put you up,’”’ he said. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 287 


He put his arms about her and swung her into 
the saddle. 

“Now give us a kiss,” he said, as she looked 
down at him. 

She stooped. “No, you don’t! Give me your 
hands.” He priscned both wrists, and kissed her 
full upon the mouth. Then he smote tne horse 
resoundingly upon the flank, and the animal blun- 
dered down the path and leaped out into the plain. 

He watched the Queen and Juggut Singh dis- 
appear in a cloud of dust and flying stones, and 
turned with a deep sigh of relief to the lake. 
Drawing the Naulahka from its resting-place, and 
laying it fondly out upon his hands, he fed his 
eyes upon it. 

The stones kindled with the glow of the dawn, 
and mocked the shifting colors of the hill. The 
shining ropes of gems put to shame the red glare 
that shot up from behind the reeds, as they had 
dulled the glare of the torches on the night of the 
little Prince’s wedding. ‘The tender green of the 
reeds themselves, the intense blue of the lake, 
the beryl of the flashing kingfishers, and the 
blinding ripples spreading under the first rays of 
the sun, as a bevy of coots flapped the water from 
their wings —the necklace abashed them all. Only 
the black diamond took no joy from the joy of the 
morning, but lay among its glorious fellows as 


288 THE NAULAHKA. 


sombre and red-hearted as the troublous night out 
of which Tarvin had snatched it. 

Tarvin ran the stones through his hands one by 
one, and there were forty-five of them—each stone 
perfect and flawless of its kind; nipped, lest any 
of its beauty should be hidden, by a tiny gold 
clasp, each stone swinging all but free from the 
strand of soft gold on which it was strung, and 
each stone worth a king’s ransom or a queen’s good 
name. 

It was a good moment for Tarvin. His life 
gathered into it. Topaz was safe! 

The wild duck were stringing te and fro across 
the lake, and the cranes called to one another, 
stalking through reeds almost as tall as their 
scarlet heads. From some temple hidden among 
the hills a lone priest chanted sonorously as he 
made the morning sacrifice to hi god, and from 
the city in the plain cam the boom oi the first 
ward-drums, telling that the gates were open and 
the day was born. 

Tarvin lifted his head from the necklace. The 
jade-handled knife was lying at his feet. He 
picked up the delicate weapon and threw it into 
the lake. 

*“ And now for Kate,” he said. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 289 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Now we are come to our Kingdom, 
And the State is thus and thus. 
Our legions wait at the palace gate — 
Little it profits us. 
Now we are come to our Kingdom. 


Now we are come to our Kingdom ; 
The crown is ours to take — 
With a naked sword at the council-board, 
And under the throne the snake. 
Now we are come to our Kingdom. 


Now we are come to our Kingdom, 

But my love’s eyelids fall — 
All that I wrou ht for, all that I fought for, 

Delight her nothing at all. 

My crown is yvithered leaves, 

For she sits in the dust and grieves. 

Now we are come to our Kingdom.* 
King Anthony. 


THE palace on its. red rock seemed to be still 
asleep as he cantered across the empty plain. <A 
man on a camel rode out of one of the city gates 
at right angles to his course, and Tarvin noted 
with interest how swiftly a long-legged camel of 
the desert can move. Familiar as he had now 
become with the ostrich-necked beasts, he could 





* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. U 


290 THE NAULAHKA. 


not help associating them with Barnum’s Circus 
and boyhood memories. ‘The man drew near and 
crossed in front of him. ‘Then, in the stillness of 
the morning, Tarvin heard the dry click of a voice 
he understood. It was the sound made by bring- 
ing up the cartridge of a repeating rifle. Mechan- 
ically he slipped from the saddle, and was on the 
other side of the horse as the rifle spoke, and a 
puff of blue smoke drifted up and hung motionless 
above the camel. 

“YT might have known she’d get in her work 


> he muttered, peering over his _ horse’s 


early,’ 
withers. “I can’t drop him at this distance with 
a revolver. What’s the fool waiting for?” 

Then he perceived that, with characteristic native 
inaptitude, the man had contrived to jam his lever, 
and was beating it furiously on the forepart of 
the saddle. Tarvin remounted hastily, and gal- 
loped up, revolver in hand, to cover the blanched 
visage of Juggut Singh. 

“You! Why, Juggut, old man, this isn’t kind 
of you.” | 

“It was an order,” said Juggut, quivering with 
apprehension. “It was no fault of mine. I—I 
do not understand these things.” 

“T should smile. Let me show you.” He took 
the rifle from the trembling hand. “The cartridge 
is jammed, my friend; it don’t shoot as well that 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 291 


way. It only needs a little knack—so. You 
ought to learn it, Juggut.” He jerked the empty 
shell over his shoulder. | 

“What will you do to me?” cried the eunuch. 
“She would have killed me if I had not come.” 

“Don’t you believe it, Juggut. She’s a Jumbo 
at theory, but weak in practice. Go on ahead, 
please.”’ 

They started back toward the city, Juggut lead- 
ing the way on his camel, and looking back appre- 
hensively every minute. ‘Tarvin smiled at him 
dryly but reassuringly, balancing on his hip the 
captured rifle. He observed that it was a very 
good rifle if properly used. 

At the entrance to Sitabhai’s wing of the palace 
Juggut Singh dismounted and slunk into the court- 
yard, the livid image of fear and shame. Tarvin 
clattered after him, and as the eunuch was about 
to disappear through a door, called him back. 

“You have forgotten your gun, Juggut,” he 
said. “Don’t be afraid of it.” Juggut was put- 
ting up a doubtful hand to take it from him. 
“It won’t hurt anybody this trip. Take yourself 
back to the lady, and tell her you are returned with 
thanks.” 

No sound came to his ear from behind the green 
shutters as he rode away leaving Juggut staring 
after him. Nothing fell upon him from out of 


292, THE NAULAHKA. 


the arch, and the apes were tied securely. Sita- 
bhai’s next move was evidently yet to be played 
His own next move he had already considered. 
It was a case for bolting. 
He rode to the mosque outside the city, routed 
out his old friend in dove-colored satin, and made 
him send this message: 


“Mrs. Murrie, DENVER. — Necklace is yours. 
Get throat ready, and lay that track into Topaz. 
“ TARYINe 


Then he turned his horse’s head toward Kate. 
He buttoned his coat tightly across his chest, and 
patted the resting-place of the Naulahka fondly, as 
he strode up the path to the missionary’s veranda, 
when he had tethered Fibby outside. His high good 
humor with himself and the world spoke through his 
eyes as he greeted Mrs. Estes at the door. 

“You have been hearing something pleasant,” she 
said. ‘“Won’t you come in?” 

“Well, either the pleasantest, or next to the 
pleasantest, I’m not sure which,” he answered, 
with a smile, as he followed her into the familiar 
sitting-room. “I’d like to tell you all about it, 
Mrs. Estes. I feel almightily like telling somebody. 
But it isn’t a healthy story for this neighborhood.” 
He glanced about him. “I’d hire the town-crier 


and a few musical instruments, and advertise it, if 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 293 


I had my way; and we’d all have a little Fourth of 
July celebration and a bonfire, and I’d read the 
Declaration of Independence over the natives with 
a relish. But it won’t do. There zs a story I'd 
like to tell you, though,” he added, with a sudden 
thought. “You know why I come here so much, 
don’t you, Mrs. Estes—I mean outside of your 
kindness to me, and my liking you all so much, 
and our always having such good times together? 
You know, don’t you?” 

Mrs. Estes smiled. “I suppose I do,” she said. 

“Well, that’s right. That’s right. I thought 
you did. Then I hope you’re my friend.” 

“Tf you mean that I wish you well, I do. But 
you can understand that I feel responsible for Miss 
Sheriff. I have sometimes thought I ought to let 
her mother know.” 

“Oh, her mother knows. She’s full of it. You 
might say she liked it. The trouble isn’t there, 
you know, Mrs. Estes.” 

“No. She’s a singular girl; very strong, very 
sweet. I’ve grown to love her dearly. She has 
wonderful courage. But I should like it better for 
her if she would give it up, and all that goes with 
it. She would be better married,”’ she said medi- 
tatively. 

Tarvin gazed at her admiringly. “How wise 
you are, Mrs. Estes! How wise you are!” he 


294 THE NAULAHKA. 


murmured. “If I’ve told her that once I’ve told 
her a dozen times. Don’t you think, also, that it 
would be better if she were married at once — right 
away, without too much loss of time?” 

His companion looked at him to see if he was 
in earnest. Tarvin was sometimes a little per- 
plexing to her. “I think if you are clever you 


b) 


will leave it to the course of events,” she replied, 
after a moment. “I have watched her work here, 
hoping that she might succeed where every one 
else has failed. But I know in my heart that she 
won’t. There’s too much against her. She’s 
working against thousands of years of traditions, 
and training, and habits of hfe. Sooner or later 
they are certain to defeat her; and then, whatever 
her courage, she must give in. I’ve thought some- 
times lately that she might have trouble very soon. 
There’s a good deal of dissatisfaction at the hos- 
pital. Lucien hears some stories that make me 
anxious.” 

“Anxious! I should say so. That’s the worst 
of it. It isn’t only that she won’t come to me, 
Mrs. Estes, —that you can understand, —but she 
is running her head meanwhile into all sorts of 
impossible dangers. IJ haven’t time to wait until 
she sees that point. I haven’t time to wait until 
she sees any point at all but that this present 
moment, now and here, would be a good moment 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 295 


in which to marry Nicholas Tarvin. Ive got to 
get out of Rhatore. That’s the long and the short 
of it, Mrs. Estes. Don’t ask me why. It’s neces- 
sary. And I must take Kate with me. Help me 
if you love her.”’ | 

To this appeal Mrs. Estes made the handsomest 
response in her power, by saying that she would 
go up and tell her that he wished to see her. This 
seemed to take some time; and Tarvin waited 
patiently, with a smile on his lips. He did not 
doubt that Kate would yield. In the glow of 
another success it was not possible to him to sup- 
pose that she would not come around now. Had. 
he not the Naulahka? She went with it; she was 
indissolubly connected with it. Yet he was will- 
ing to impress into his service all the help he could 
get, and he was glad to believe that Mrs. Estes 
was talking to her. 

It was an added prophecy of success when he 
found from a copy of a recent issue of the “ Topaz 


b) 


Telegram,” which he picked up while he waited, 
that the “ Lingering Lode” had justified his expec- 
tations. The people he had left in charge had 
struck a true fissure vein, and were taking out 
$500 a week. He crushed the paper into his 
pocket, restraining an inclination to dance; it was 
perhaps safest, on reflection, to postpone that exer- 


cise until he had seen Kate. The little congrat- 


296 THE NAULAHKA. 


ulatory whistle that he struck up instead, he had 
to sober a moment later into a smile as Kate 
opened the door and came in to him. There could 
be no two ways about it with her now. His smile, 
do what he would, almost said as much. 

A single glance at her face showed him, how- 
ever, that the affair struck her less simply. He 
forgave her; she could not know the source of his 
inner certitude. He even took time to like the 
gray house-dress, trimmed with black velvet, that 
she was wearing in place of the white which had 
become habitual to her. 

“I’m glad you’ve dropped white for a moment,” 
he said, as he rose to shake hands with her. “It’s 
a sign. It represents a general abandonment and 
desertion of this blessed country; and that’s just 
the mood I want to find you in. I want you to 
drop it, chuck it, throw it up.” He held ‘her 
brown little hand in the swarthy fist he pushed 
out from his own white sleeve, and looked down 
into her eyes attentively. 

“What?” 

“India—the whole business. I want you to 
come with me.” He spoke gently. 

She looked up, and he saw in the quivering 
lines about her mouth signs of the contest on this 
theme that she had passed through before coming 
down to him. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 297 


“You are going? I’m so glad.” She hesitated 
a moment. “You know why?” she added, with 
what he saw was an intention of kindness. | 

Tarvin laughed as he seated himself. “I like 
that. Yes; I’m going,” he said. “But I’m not 
going alone. You’re in the plan,” he assured her, 
with a nod. 

She shook her head. 

“No; don’t say that, Kate. You mustn’t. It’s 
serious this time.” . 

“ Hasn’t it always been?” she sank into a chair. 
“It’s always been serious enough for me— that I 
couldn’t do what you wish, I mean. Not doing it 
—that is doing, something else; the one thing I 
want to do—is the most serious thing in the world 
to me. Nothing has happened to change me, Nick. 
I would tell you in a moment if it had. How is 
it different for either of us?” 

“Lots of ways. But that I’ve got to leave 
Rhatore for a sample. You don’t think I’d leave 
you behind, I hope.” | 

She studied the hands she had folded in her lap 
fora moment. Then she looked up and faced him 
with her open gaze. 

“Nick,” she said, “let me try to explain as 
clearly as. I can how all this seems to me. You 
ean correct me if I’m wrong.” 

“Oh, you’re sure to be wrong!” he cried; but 
he leaned forward. 


298 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Well, let me try. You ask me to marry 
you?” 

“T do,” answered Tarvin, solemnly. “Give me 
a chance of saying that before a clergyman, and 
you'll see.” 

“T am grateful, Nick. It’s a gift—the highest, 
the best. and I’m grateful. But what is it you 
really want? Shall you mind my asking that, 
Nick? You want me to round out your life; you 
want me to complete your other ambitions. Isn’t 
that so? Tell me honestly, Nick; isn’t that so?” 

“Nol” roared Tarvin. 

“Ah, but it is! Marriage is that way. It is 
right. Marriage means that—to be absorbed into 
another’s life: to live your own, not as your own, 
but as another’s. It is a good life. It’s a woman’s 
life. I can like it; I can believe in it. But I 
can’t see myself in it. A woman gives the whole 
of herself in marriage —in all happy marriages. I 
haven’t the whole of myself to give. It belongs 
to something else. And I couldn’t offer you a 
part; it is all the best men give to women, but 
from a woman it would do no man any good.” 

“You mean that you have the choice between 
giving up your work and giving up me, and that 
the last is easiest.” 

“T don’t say that; but suppose I did, would it 
be so strange? Be honest, Nick. Suppose I asked 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST, 299 


you to give up the centre and meaning of your 
life? Suppose I asked you to give up your 
work? And suppose I offered in exchange — mar- 
riage! No, no!” She shook her head. ‘ Marriage 
is good; but what man would pay that price for 
it?” 

“My dearest girl, isn’t that just the opportunity 
of women?” 

“The opportunity of the happy women — yes; but 
it isn’t given to every one to see marriage like that. 
Even for women there is more than one kind of 
devotion.” 

“Oh, look here, Kate! A man isn’t an orphan 
asylum or a home for the friendless. You take 
him too seriously. - You talk as if you had to make 
him your leading charity, and give up everything 
to the business. Of course you have to pretend 
something of the kind at the start, but in practice 
you only have to eat a few dinners, attend a semi- 
annual board-meeting, and a strawberry-festival or 
two to keep the thing going. It’s just a general 
agreement to drink your coffee with a man in the 
morning, and be somewhere around, not too far from 
the fire, in not too ugly a dress, when he comes 
home in the evening. Come! It’s an easy con- 
tract. Try me,. Kate, and you'll see how simple 
T’tl make it for you. I know about the other 
things. I understand well enough that you would 


300 THE NAULAHKA. 


never care for a life which didn’t allow you to 
make a lot of people happy besides your husband. 
I recognize that. I begin with it. And I say 
that’s just what I want. You have a talent for 
making folks happy. Well, I secure you on a 
special agreement to make me happy, and after 
you’ve attended to that, I want you to sail in and 
make the whole world bloom with your kindness. 
And you'll do it, too. Confound it, Kate, we'll 
do it! No one knows how good two people could 
be if they formed a syndicate and made a business 
of it. It hasn’t been tried. Try it with me! O, 
Kate, I love you, I need you, and if you’ll let 
me, I’ll make a life for you!” 

“T know, Nick, you would be kind. You would 
do all that a man can do. But it isn’t the man 
who makes marriages happy or possible; it’s the 
woman, and it must be. I should either do my 
part and shirk the other, and then I should be 
miserable; or I should shirk you, and be more 
miserable. Hither way, such happiness is not for 
me.” | 

Tarvin’s hand found the Naulahka within his 
breast, and clutched it tightly. Strength seemed 
to go out of it into him—strength to restrain 
himself from losing all by a dozen savage words. 

“Kate, my girl,” he said quietly, “we haven’t 
time to conjure dangers. We have to face a real 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 301 


one. You are not safe here. I can’t leave you in 
this place, and I’ve got to go. That is why I ask 
you to marry me at once.” 

“But I fear nothing. Who would harm me?” 

“Sitabhai,” he answered grimly. “But what 
difference does it make? I tell you, you are not 
safe. Be sure that I know.” 

“And you?” 

“Oh, I don’t count. 

“The truth, Nick!” she demanded. 

“Well, I always said that there was nothing 
like the climate of Topaz.” 

“You mean you are in danger— great danger, 
perhaps.” 

“Sitabhai isn’t going round hunting for ways 
to save my precious life, that’s a fact.” He smiled 
at her. | 

“Then you must go away at once; you must 
not lose an hour. O, Nick, you won’t wait!” 

“'That’s what I say. I can do without Rhatore; 
but I can’t do without you. You must come.” 

“Do you mean that if I don’t you will stay?” 
she asked desperately. 

“No; that would be a threat. I mean I'll wait 
for you.” His eyes laughed at her. 

“Nick, is this because of what I asked you to 
do?” she demanded suddenly. 

“Vou didn’t ask me,” he defended. 


302 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Then it is, and I am much to blame.” 

“What, because I spoke to the King? My dear 
girl, that isn’t more than the introductory walk- 
around of this circus. Don’t run away with any 
question of responsibility. The only thing you are 
responsible for at this moment is to run with me 
—flee, vamose, get out. Your life isn’t worth an 
hour’s purchase here. I’m convinced of that. And 
mine isn’t worth a minute’s.” 


> she 


“You see what a situation you put me in,’ 
said accusingly. 

“T don’t put you in it, but I offer you a simple 
solution.” 

“ Yourself!” 

“Well, yes; I said it was simple. I don’t 
claim it’s brilliant. Almost any one could do more 
for you, and there are millions of better men; but 
there isn’t one who could love you. better. O, 
Kate, Kate!” he cried, rising, “trust yourself to 
my love, and I’ll back myself against the world to 
make you happy.” 

“No, no!” she exclaimed eagerly; “you must 
go away.” 

He shook his head. “I can’t leave you. Ask 
that of some one else. Do you suppose a man 
who loves you can abandon you in this desert 
wilderness to take your chances? Do you suppose 
any man could do that? Kate, my darling, come 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 303 


with me. You torment me, you kill me, by fore- 
ing me to allow you a single moment out of my 
sight. I tell you, you are in imminent, deadly 
peril. You won’t stay, knowing that. Surely you 
won’t sacrifice your life for these creatures.” 

“Yes!” she cried, rising, with the uplifted look 
on her face — “yes! If it is good to live for them, 
it is good to die for them. I do not believe my life 
is necessary; but if it is necessary, that too!” 

Tarvin gazed at her, baffled, disheartened, at a 
loss. “And you won’t come?” 

>i can't. Good by, Nick. It’s the end.” 

He took her hand. “Good afternoon,” he re- 
sponded. “It?s end enough for to-day.” 

She pursued him anxiously with her eye as he 
turned away; suddenly she started after him. 
“But you will go?” 

“Go! No! No!” he shouted. “I'll stay now if 
] have to organize a standing army, declare myself 
king, and hold the rest-house as the seat of gov- 
ernment. Go!” 

She put forth a detaining, despairing hand, but 
he was gone. Ms 

Kate returned to the little Maharaj Kunwar, 
who had been allowed to Lghten his convalescence 
by bringing down from the palace a number of his 
toys and pets. She sat down by the side of the 
bed, and cried for a long time silently. 


304 THE NAULAHKA. 


“What is it, Miss Kate?” asked the Prince, 
after he had watched her for some minutes, won- 
dering. “Indeed, I am quite well now, so there 
is nothing to cry for. When I go back to the 
palace I will tell my father all that you have done 
for me, and he will give you a village. We Raj- 
puts do not forget.” 

“It’s not that, Lalji,” she said, stooping over 
him, drying her tear-stained eyes. 

“Then my father will give you two villages. No 
one must cry when I am getting well, for I am 
a king’s son. Where is Moti? I want him to 
sit upon a chair.”’ 

Kate rose obediently, and began to call for the 
Maharaj Kunwar’s latest pet—a little gray mon- 
key, with a gold collar, who wandered at liberty 
through the house and garden, and at night did 
his best to win a place for himself by the young 
Prince’s side. He answered the call from the 
boughs of a tree in the garden, where he was 
arguing with the wild parrots, and entered the 
room, crooning softly in the monkey tongue. 


? 


“Come here, little Hanuman,” said the Prince, 


raising one hand. ‘The monkey bounded to his 


? 


side. “I have heard of a king,” said the Prince, 
playing with his golden collar, “who spent three 
lacs in marrying two monkeys. Moti, wouldst 


thou like a wife? No, no; a gold collar is enough 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 305 


for thee. We will spend our three lacs in marry- 
ing Miss Kate to Tarvin Sahib, when we get well, 
and thou shalt dance at the wedding.” He was 
speaking in the vernacular, but Kate understood 
too well the coupling of her name with Tarvin’s. 
“Don’t, Lalji, don’t!” 
“Why not, Kate? Why, even I am married. 


29 


“Yes, yes. But it is different. Kate would 
rather you didn’t, Lalji.” 

“Very well,” answered the Maharaj, with a 
pout. “Now I am only a little child. When I 
am well I will be a king again, and no one can 
refuse my gifts. Listen. Those are my father’s 
trumpets. He is coming to see me.” 

A bugle call sounded in the distance. There 
was a clattering of horses’ feet, and a little later 
the Maharajah’s carriage and escort thundered up 
to the door of the missionary’s house. Kate looked 
anxiously to see if the noise irritated her young 
charge, but his eyes brightened, his nostrils quiv- 
ered, and he whispered, as his hand tightened on 
the hilt of the sword always by his side: 

“That is very good! My father has brought all 
his sowars.” 

Before Kate could rise, Mr. Estes had ushered 
the Maharajah into the room, which was dwarfed 
by his bulk and by the bravery of his presence. 


He had been assisting at a review of his body- 
x 


306 THE NAULAHKA. 


guard, and came therefore in his full uniform as 
commander-in-chief of the army of the state, which 
was no mean affair. The Maharaj Kunwar ran his 
eyes delightedly up and down the august figure of 
his father, beginning with the polished gold-spurred 
jack-boots, and ascending to the snow-white doe- 
skin breeches, the tunic blazing with gold, and 
the diamonds of the Order of the Star of India, 
ending with the saffron turban and its nodding 
emerald aigret. The King drew off his gauntlets, 
and shook hands cordially with Kate. After an 
orgy it was noticeable that his Highness became 
more civilized. 

“ And is the child well?” he asked. ‘They told 
me that it was a little fever, and I, too, have 
had some fever.” 

“'The Prince’s trouble was much worse than that, 
I am afraid, Maharajah Sahib,” said Kate. 

“Ah, little one,” said the King, bending over 
his son very tenderly, and speaking in the vernac- 
ular, “this is the fault of eating too much.” 

“Nay, father, I did not eat, and I am quite 
well.” 

Kate stood at the head of the bed stroking the 
boy’s hair. 

“How many troops paraded this morning?” 

“Both squadrons, my General,” answered the 
father, his eye lighting with pride. “Thou art all 
a Rajput, my son.” 7 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 307 


“And my escort— where were they?” 

“With Pertab Singh’s troop. They led the 
charge at the end of the fight.” 

“By the Sacred Horse,” said the Maharaj Kun- 
war, “they shall lead in true fight one day. Shall 
they not, my father? Thou on the right flank, and 
I on the left.” 

“Kven so. But to do these things a prince must 
not be ill, and he must learn many things.” 

“JT know,” returned the Prince, reflectively. 
“My father, I have lain here some nights, think- 
ing. Am I a little child?” He looked at Kate 
a minute, and whispered: “I would speak to my 
father. Let no one come in.” 

Kate left the room quickly, with a backward 
smile at the boy, and the King seated himself by 
the bed. 

“No; I am not a little child,” said the Prince. 
“In five years I shall be a man, and many men 
will obey me. But how shall I know the right or 
the wrong in giving an order?” 

“It is necessary to learn many things,” repeated 
the Maharajah, vaguely. 

“Yes; I have thought of that lying here in the 
dark,” said the Prince. “And it is in my mind 
that these things are not all learned within the 
walls of the palace, or from women. My father, 


let me go away to learn how to be a prince!” 


308 THE NAULAHKA. 


“But whither wouldst thou go? Surely my 
kingdom is thy home, beloved.” | 

“I know, I know,” returned the boy. “And I 
will come back again, but do not let me be a 
laughing-stock to the other princes. At the wed- 
ding the Rawut of Bunnaul mocked me _ because 
my school-books were not so many as his. And 
he is only the son of an ennobled lord. He is 
without ancestry. But he has been up and down 
Rajputana as far as Delhi and Agra, ay, and Abu; 
and he is in the upper class of the Princes’ School — 
at Ajmir. Father, all the sons of the kings go 
there. They do not play with the women; they 
ride with men. And the air and the water are 
good at Ajmir. And I should lke to go.” 

The face of the Maharajah grew troubled, for 
the boy was very dear to him. 

“But an evil might befall thee, Lalji. Think 
again.” , 

“T have thought,” responded the Prince. “ What 
evil can come to me under the charge of the Eng- 
lishman there? The Rawut of Bunnaul told me 
that I should have my own rooms, my own ser- 
vants, and my own stables, like the other princes 
—and that I should be much considered there.” 

“Yes,” said the King, soothingly. “We be chil- 
dren of the sun, thou and I, my Prince.” 


“Then it concerns me to be as learned and as 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST, 309 


strong and as valiant as the best of my race. 
Father, I am sick of running about the rooms of 
_the women, of listening to my mother, and to the 
singing of the dance-girls; and they are always 
pressing their kisses on me. Let me go to Ajmir. 
Let me go to the Princes’ School. And in a year, 
even in a year, —so says the Rawut of Bunnaul, 
-——I shall be fit to lead my escort as a king should 
lead them. Is it a promise, my father?” 

“When thou art well,” answered the Maharajah, 
“we will speak of it again, not as a father to a 
child, but as a man to a man.” 

The Maharaj Kunwar’s eyes grew bright with 
pleasure. “That is good,” he said— “as a man to 
a man.” 

The Maharajah fondled him in his arms for a 
few minutes, and told him the small news of the 
palace —such things as would interest a little boy. 
Then he said, laughing, “Have I your leave to 
Soe 

“OQ my father!” The Prince buried his head 
in his father’s beard, and threw his arms around 
him. The Maharajah disengaged himself gently, 
and as gently went out into the veranda. Before 
Kate returned he had disappeared in a cloud of 
dust and a flourish of trumpets. As he was going, 
a messenger came to the house bearing a grass- 
woven basket piled high with shaddock, banana, 


310 THE NAULAHKA. 


and pomegranate — emerald, gold, and copper, which 
he laid at Kate’s feet, saying, “It is a present 
from the Queen.” 

The little Prince within heard the voice, and 
cried joyfully: “Kate, my mother has sent you 
those. Are they big fruits? Oh, give me a 
pomegranate,” he begged as she came back into 
his room. “I have tasted none since last winter.” 

Kate set the basket on the table, and the Prince’s 
mood changed. He wanted pomegranate sherbet, 
and Kate must mix the sugar and the miik and 
the syrup and the plump red seeds. Kate left the 
room for an instant to get a glass, and it occurred 
to Moti, who had been foiled in an attempt to 
appropriate the Prince’s emeralds, and had hidden 
under the bed, to steal forth and seize upon a ripe 
banana. Knowing well that the Maharaj Kunwar 
could not move, Moti paid no attention to his 
voice, but settled himself deliberately on his 
haunches, chose his banana, stripped off the skin 
with his little black fingers, grinned at the Prince, 
and began to eat. | 

“Very well, Moti,” said the Maharaj Kunwar, 
in the vernacular; “Kate says you are not a god, 
but only a little gray monkey, and I think so too. 
When she comes back you will be beaten, Hanu- 
man.” 

Moti had eaten half the banana when Kate 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. OLE 


returned, but he did not try to escape. She cuffed 
the marauder lightly, and he fell over on his side. 

“Why, Lalji, what’s the matter with Moti?” 
she asked, regarding the monkey curiously: 

“He has been stealing, and now I suppose he 
is playing dead man. Hit him!” 

Kate bent over the limp little body; but there 
was no need to chastise Moti. He was dead. 

She turned pale, and lifting the basket of fruit 
quickly to her nostrils, sniffed delicately at it. <A 
faint, sweet, cloying odor rose from the brilliant 
pile. It was overpowering. She set the basket 
down, putting her hand to her head. The odor 
dizzied her. 

“Well,” said the Prince, who could not see his 
dead pet, “I want my sherbet.” 

“The fruit is not quite good, I’m afraid, Lalji,” 
she said, with an effort. As she spoke she tossed 
into the garden, through the open window, the 
uneaten fragment of the banana that Moti had 
clasped so closely to his wicked little breast. 

A parrot instantly swooped down from the trees 
on the morsel, and took it back to his perch in 
the branches. It was done before Kate, still 
unsteadied, could make a motion to stop it, and 
a moment later a little ball of green feathers fell 
from the covert of leaves, and the parrot also lay 
dead on the ground. 


ST? THE NAULAHKA. 


“No; the fruit is not good,” she said mechani- 
cally, her eyes wide with terror, and her face 
blanched. Her thoughts leaped to Tarvin. Ah, 
the warnings and the entreaties that she had put 
from her! He had said that she was not safe. 
Was he not right? The awful subtlety of the 
danger in which she stood was a thing to shake 
a stronger woman than she. From where would 
it come next? Out of what covert might it not 
leap? The very air might be poisoned. She 
scarcely dared to breathe. ) 

The audacity of the attack daunted her as much 
as its design. If this might be done in open day, 
under cover of friendship, immediately after the 
visit of the King, what might not the gypsy in 
the palace dare next? She and the Maharaj Kun- 
war were under the same roof; if Tarvin was right 
in supposing that Sitabhai could wish her harm, the 
fruit was evidently intended for them both. She 
shuddered to think how she herself might have 
given the fruit to the Maharaj innocently. 

The Prince turned in his bed and regarded Kate. 
“You are not well?” he asked, with grave polite- 
ness. “Then do not trouble about the sherbet. 
Give me Moti to play with.” 

“OQ Lalji, Lalji!” cried Kate, tottering to the 
bed. She dropped beside the boy, cast her arms 
defendingly about him, and burst into tears. 


A STORY-OF WEST AND EAST. 34h} 


“You have cried twice,” said the Prince, watch- 
ing her heaving shoulders curiously. “I shall tell 
Tarvin Sahib.” 

The word smote Kate’s heart, and filled her with 
a bitter and fruitless longing. Oh, for a moment 
of the sure and saving strength she had just rejected! 
Where was he? she asked herself reproachfully. 
What had happened to the man she had sent from 
her to take the chances of life and death in this 
awful land? 

At that hour Tarvin was sitting in his room at 
the rest-house, with both doors open to the stifling 
wind of the desert, that he might command all 
approaches clearly, his revolver on the table in 
front of him, and the Naulahka in his pocket, yearn- 
ing to be gone, and loathing this conquest that did 
not include Kate. 


314 THE NAULAHKA. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


We be the Gods of the East 
Older than all, 

Masters of mourning and feast — 
How shall we fall ? 


Will they gape to the husks that ye proffer 
Or yearn to your song, 
And we — have we nothing to offer 
Who ruled them so long 
In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of 
the conch and the gong ? 


Over the strife of the schools 
Low the day, burns — 
Back with the kine from the pools 
Each one returns 
To the life that he knows where the altar flame glows and the 
tulsi is trimmed in the urns.* 


Song. 

THE evening and the long night gave Kate 
ample time for self-examination after she had 
locked up the treacherous fruit, and consoled the 
Maharaj, through her tears, for the mysterious death 
of Moti. One thing only seemed absolutely clear 
to her, when she rose red-eyed and unrefreshed 
the next morning: her work was with the women 
as long as life remained, and the sole refuge for 


* Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 





A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 315 


her present trouble was in the portion of that work 
which lay nearest to her hand. Meanwhile the 
man who loved her remained in Gokral Seetarun, 
in deadly peril of his life, that he might be within 
call of her; and she could not call him, for to - 
summon him was to yield, and she dared not. 

She took her way to the hospital. The dread 
for him that had assailed her yesterday had become 
a horror that would not let her think. 

The woman of the desert was waiting as usual 
at the foot of the steps, her hands clasped over 
her knee, and her face veiled. Behind her was 
Dhunpat Rai, who should have been among the 
wards; and she could see that the court-yard was 
filled with people—strangers and visitors, who, 
by her new regulations, were allowed to come only 
once a week. This was not their visiting-day, 
and Kate, strained and worn by all that she had 
passed through since the day before, felt an angry 
impulse in her heart go out against them, and 
spoke wrathfully. 

“What is the meaning of this, Dhunpat Rai?” 
she demanded, alighting. 

“There is commotion of popular bigotry within,” 
said Dhunpat Rai. “It is nothing. I have seen 
‘it before. Only do not go in.” 

She put him aside without a word, and was 
about to enter when she met one of her patients, 


316 THE NAULAHKA. 


a man in the last stage of typhoid fever, being 
borne out by half a dozen clamoring friends, who 
shouted at her menacingly. ‘The woman of the 
desert was at her side in an instant, raising her 
hand, in the brown hollow of which lay a long, 
broad-bladed knife. 

“Be still, dogs!” she shouted, in their own 
tongue. “Dare not to lay hands on this pert, who 
has done all for you!” 

“She is killing our people,” shouted a_ vil- 
lager. 

“Maybe,” said the woman, with a flashing smile; 
“but I know who will be lying here dead if you 
do not suffer her to pass. Are you Rajputs; or 
Bhils from the hills, hunters of fish and diggers 
after grubs, that you run like cattle because a lying 
priest from nowhere troubles your heads of mud? 
Is she killing your people? How long can you 
keep that man alive with your charms and your 
muntras!” she demanded, pointing to the stricken 
form on the stretcher. “Out—go out! Is this 
hospital your own village to defile? Have you 
paid one penny for the roof above you or the drugs 
in your bellies? Get hence before I spit upon 
you!”’ She brushed them aside with a regal ges- 
ture. 

“It is best not to go in,” said Dhunpat Rai in 
Kate’s ear. “There is local holy man in the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 817 


court-yard, and he is agitating their minds. Also, 
I myself feel much indisposed.”’ 

“But what does all this mean?” demanded Kate 
again. 

For the hospital was in the hands of a hurrying 
crowd, who were strapping up bedding and cook- 
ing-pots, lamps and linen, calling to one another 
up and down the staircases in subdued voices, and 
bringing the sick from the upper wards as ants 
bring eggs out of a broken hill, six or eight to 
each man—some holding bunches of marigold 
flowers in their hands, and pausing to mutter 
prayers at each step, others peering fearfully into 
the dispensary, and yet others drawing water from 
the well and pouring it out around the beds. 

In the centre of the court-yard, as naked as the 
lunatic who had once lived there, sat an ash- 
smeared, long-haired, eagle-taloned, half-mad, wan- 
dering native priest, and waved above his head 
his buckhorn staff, sharp as a lance at one end, 
while he chanted in a loud, monotonous voice some 
song that drove the men and women to work more 
quickly. 

As Kate faced him, white with wrath, her eyes 
blazing, the song turned to a yelp of fierce hatred. 

She dashed among the women swiftly — her own 
women, whom she thought had grown to love her. 
But their relatives were about them, and Kate was 


318 THE NAULAHKA. 


thrust back by a bare-shouldered, loud-voiced dweller 
of the out-villages in the heart of the desert. 

The man had no intention of doing her harm, 
but the woman of the desert slashed him across 
the face with her knife, and he withdrew howling. 

“Let me speak to them,” said Kate, and the 
woman beside her quelled the clamor of the crowd 
with uplifted hands. Only the priest continued 
his song. Kate strode toward him, her little figure 
erect and quivering, crying in the vernacular, “Be 
silent, thou, or I will find means to close thy 
mouth!” 

The man was hushed, and Kate, returning to 
her women, stood among them, and began to speak 
impassionedly. 

“O, my women, what have I done?” she cried, 
still in the vernacular. “If there is any fault here, 
who should right it but your friend? Surely you 
can speak to me day or night.”’ She threw out her 
arms. “Sunlo, hamaree bhain-log! Listen, my 
sisters! Have you gone mad, that you wish to 
go abroad now, half-cured, sick, or dying? You 
are free to go at any hour. Only, for your own 
sake, and for the sake of your children, do not go 
before I have cured you, if God so please. It is 
summer in the desert now, and many of you have 
come from many cross distant.” 

“She speaks truth, she speaks truth,” said a 
voice in the crowd. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 319 


“ Ay, I do speak truth. And I have dealt fairly 
by ye. Surely it is upon your heads to tell me 
the cause of this flight, and not to run away like 
mice. My sisters, ye are weak and ill, and your 
friends do not know what is best for ye. But I 
know.” 

“Arre! But what can we do?” cried a feeble 
voice. “It is no fault of ours. I, at least, would 
fain die in peace, but the priest says —” 

Then the clamor broke out afresh. ‘There are 
charms written upon the plasters —” 

“Why should we become Christians against our 
will? The wise woman that was sent away asks 
14m 

“What are the meanings of the red marks on 
the plasters ?”’ 

“Why should we have strange devil-marks stamped 
upon our bodies? And they burn, too, like the 
fires of hell.” 

“The priest came yesterday, —that holy man 
yonder, —and he said it had been revealed to 
him, sitting among the hills, that this devil’s plan 
was on foot to make us lose our religion —” 

“And to send us out of the hospital with marks 
upon our bodies —ay, and all the babies we should 
bear in the hospital should have tails like camels, 
and ears like mules. The wise woman says 50; 
the priest says so.” 


320 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Hush! hush!” cried Kate, in the face of these 
various words. “What plasters? What child’s 
talk is this of plasters and devils? Not one child, 
but many have been born here, and all were comely. 
Ye know it! This is the word of the worthless 
woman whom I sent away because she was torturing 
you.” 

“Nay; but the priest said —” 

“What care I for the priest? Has he nursed 
you? Has he watched by you of nights? Has he 
sat by your bedside, and smoothed your pillow, 
and held your hand in pain? Has he taken your 
children from you and put them to sleep, when 
he needed an hour’s rest?” 

“He is a holy man. He has worked miracles. 
We dare not face the anger of the gods.” 

One woman, bolder than the rest, shouted, “* Look 


b) 


at this,” and held before Kate’s face one of the 
prepared mustard leaves lately ordered from Cal- 
cutta, which bore upon the back, in red ink, the 
maker’s name and trademark. 

“What is this devil’s thing?” demanded the 
woman, fiercely. 

The woman of the desert caught her by the 
shoulder and forced her to her knees. 

“Be still, woman without a nose!” she cried, 
her voice vibrating with passion. “She is not of 
thy clay, and thy touch would defile her. Remem- 
ber thine own dunghill, and speak softly.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 321 


Kate picked up the plaster, smiling. 

“And who says there is devil’s work in this?” 
she demanded. 

“The holy man, the priest. Surely he should 
know.” 

“Nay, ye should know,” said Kate, patiently. 
She understood now, and could pity. “Ye have 
worn it, Did it work thee any harm, Pithira?” 
She pointed directly toward her. “Thou hast 
thanked me not once but many times for giving 
thee relief through this charm. If it was the 
devil’s work, why did it not consume thee?” 

“Indeed, it burnt very much indeed,” responded 
the woman, «vith a nervous laugh. 

Kate could not. help laughing. “That is true. 
I cannot make my drugs pleasant. But ye know 
that they do good. What do these people, your 
friends — villagers, camel-drivers, goatherds — know 
of English drugs? Are they so wise among their 
hills, or is the priest so wise, that they can judge 
for ye here, fifty miles away from them? Do not 
listen! Oh, do not listen! Tell them that ye 
will stay with me, and I will make ye well. I 
can do no more. It was for that I came. I heard 
of your misery ten thousand miles away, and it 
burnt into my heart. Would I have come so far 
to work you harm? Go back to your beds, my 


sisters, and bid these foolish people depart.” 
Y 


329 THE NAULAHKA. 


There was @ murmur among the women, as if 
of assent and doubt. For a moment the decision 
swayed one way and the other. 

Then the man whose face had been slashed 
shouted, “What is the use of talking? Let us 
take our wives and sisters away. We do not 
wish to have sons like devils. Give us your 
voice, O father!” he cried to the priest. 

The holy man drew himself up, and swept away 
Kate’s appeal with a torrent of abuse, imprecation, 
and threats of damnation; and the crowd began to 
slip past Kate by twos and threes, half carrying 
and half forcing their kinsfolk with them. 

Kate called on the women by name, beseeching 
them to stay, reasoning, arguing, expostulating. 
But to no purpose. Many of them were in tears; 
but the answer from all was the same. They were 
sorry, but they were only poor women, and they 
feared the wrath of their husbands. 

Minute after minute the wards were depopulated 
of their occupants, as the priest resumed his song, 
and began to dance frenziedly in the court-yard. 
The stream of colors broke out down the steps into 
the street, and Kate saw the last of her carefully 
swathed women borne out into the pitiless sun- 
glare — only the woman of the desert remaining by 
her side. 

Kate looked on with stony eyes. Her hospital 


was empty. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 823 


CHAPTER XxX. 


Ou? little maid that hath no breasts, 
Our Sister, sayeth such and such ; 

And we must bow to her behests— 
Our sister toileth overmuch. 


A field untilled, a web unwove, 

A bud withheld from sun and bee, 
An alien in the courts of love, 

And priestess of His shrine is she. 


We love her, but we laugh the while ; 

We laugh, but sobs are mixed with laughter ; 
Uur sister hath no time to smile — 

She knows not must follow after. 


Wind of the South, arise and blow 
From beds of spice, thy locks shake free — 
Breathe on her heart that she may know, 
Breathe on her eyes that she may see! 


Alas! we vex her with our mirth 
And plague her with most tender scorn 
Who stands beside the Gates of Birth, 
Herself a child —a child unborn. 


Our little maid that hath no breasts ; 
Our Sister, sayeth such and such ; 

And we must bow to her behests — 
Our sister toileth overmuch.* 


fueens’ Song from Libretto of Naulahka. 


4 Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Oo. 


324 THE NAULAHKA. 


“Has the Miss Sahib any orders?” asked Dhun- 
pat Rai, with Oriental calmness, as Kate turned 
toward the woman of the desert, staying herself 
against her massive shoulder. 

Kate simply shook her head with closed lips. 

“Tt is very sad,” said Dhunpat Rai thoughtfully, 
as though the matter were one in which he had 
no‘ interest, “but it is on account of religious 
bigotry and intolerance which is prevalent mania 
in these parts. Once—twice before I have seen 
the same thing. About powders, sometimes, and 
once they said that the graduated glasses were holy 
vessels, and zine ointment was cow-fat. But I 
have never seen all the hospital disembark simul- 
taneously. I do not think they will come back; 
but my appointment is State appointment,” he 
said with a bland smile, “and so I shall draw my 
offeeshal income as _ before.” 

Kate stared at him. “Do you mean that they 
will never come back?” she asked falteringly. 

“Oh, yes —in time—one or two; two or three 
of the men when they are hurt by tigers, or have 
ophthalmia; but the women—no. Their husbands 
will never allow. Ask that woman!” 

Kate bent a piteous look of inquiry upon the 
woman of the desert, who, stooping down, took up 
a little sand, let it trickle through her fingers, 
brushed her palms together, and shook her head. 
Kate watched these movements despairingly. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 325 


“You see it is all up—no good,” said Dhunpat 
Rai, not unkindly, but unable to conceal a certain 
expression of satisfaction in a defeat which the wise 
had already predicted. “And now what will your 
honor do? Shall I lock up dispensary, or will you 
audit drug accounts now?” 

Kate waved him off feebly. “No, no! Not now. 
I must think. I must have time. I will send you 


> 


word. Come, dear one,” she added in the vernac- 
ular to the woman of the desert, and hand in hand 
they went out from the hospital together. 

The sturdy Rajput woman caught her up like a 
child when they were outside, and set her upon 
her horse, and tramped doggedly alongside, as they 
set off together toward the house of the missionary. 

“And whither wilt thou go?” asked Kate, in the 
woman’s own tongue. 

“IT was the first of them all,’ answered the 
patient being at her side; “it is fitting therefore 
that I should be the last. Where thou goest I 
will go—and afterward what will fall will fall.” 

Kate leaned down and took the woman’s hand 
in hers with a grateful pressure. 

At the missionary’s gate she had to call up her 
courage not to break down. She had told Mrs. 
Estes so much of her hopes for the future, had 
dwelt so lovingly on all that she meant to teach 
these helpless creatures, had so constantly conferred 


326 THE NAULAHKA. 


with her about the help she had fancied herself to 
be daily bringing to them, that to own that her 
work had fallen to this ruin was unspeakably 
bitter. The thought of Tarvin she fought back. 
It went too deep. 

But, fortunately, Mrs. Estes seemed not to be 
at home, and a messenger from the queen-mother 
awaited Kate to demand her presence at the palace 
with Maharaj Kunwar. 

The woman of the desert laid a restraining hand 
on her arm, but Kate shook it off. 

“No, no, no! I must go. I must do something,” 
she exclaimed, almost fiercely, “since there is still 
some one who will let me. I must have work. It 
is my only refuge, kind one. Go you on to the 
palace.” 3 

The woman yielded silently and trudged on up 
the dusty road, while Kate sped into the house 
and to the room where the young Prince lay. 

“Lalji,” she said, bending over him, “do you 
feel well enough to be lifted into the carriage and 
taken over to see your mother?” 

“T would rather see my father,” responded the 
boy from the sofa, to which he had been transferred 
as a reward for the improvement he had made since 
yesterday. “I wish to speak to my father upon a 
most important thing.” 

“But your mother hasn’t seen you for so long, — 
dear.” 


=1 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 82 


“Very well; I will go.” 

“Then I will tell them to get the carriage 
ready.” 

Kate turned to leave the room. 

“No, please; [ will have my own. Who is with- 
out there?” 

“Heaven-born, it is I,” answered the deep voice 
of a trooper. 

“Achcha! Ride swiftly, and tell them to send 
down my barouche and escort. If it is not here 
in ten minutes, tell Sirop Singh that I will cut 
his pay and blacken his face before all my men. 
This day I go abroad again.” 

“May the mercy of God be upon the Heaven- 
born for ten thousand years,” responded the voice 
from without, as the trooper heaved himself into 
the saddle ard clattered away. 

By the time that the Prince was ready, a lumber- 
ing equipage, stuffed with many cushions, waited 
at the door. Kate and Mrs. Estes half helped and 
half carried the child into it, though he strove to 
stand on his feet in the veranda and acknowledge 
the salute of his escort as befitted a man. 

“Ahi! I am very weak,” he said, with a little 
laugh, as they drove to the palace. “Certainly it 
seems to myself that I shall never get well in 
Rhatore.”’ 

_ Kate put her arm about him and drew him closer 
to her. 


\ 


POLS THE NAULAHKA. 


“Kate,” he continued, “if I ask anything of my 
father, will you say that that thing is good for 
me?” 

Kate, whose thoughts were still bitter and far 
away, patted his shoulder vaguely as she lifted 
her tear-stained eyes toward the red height on 
which the palace stood. 

“How can I tell, Lalji?” She smiled down into 
his upturned face. 

“But it is a most wise thing.” 

“Ts it?” asked she fondly. 

“Yes; I have thought it out by myself. I am 
myself a Raj Kumar, and I would go to the Raj 
Kumar College, where they train the sons of princes 
to become kings. That is only at Ajmir; but I 
must go and learn, and fight, and ride with the 
other princes of Rajputana, and then I shall be alto- 
gether a man. I am going to the Raj Kumar Col- 
lege at Ajmir, that I may learn about the world. 
But you shall see how it is wise. The world 
looks very big since I have been ill. Kate, how 
big is the world which you have seen across the 
Black Water? Where is Tarvin Sahib? I have 
wished to see him too. Is Tarvin Sahib. angry 
with me or with you?” 

He plied her with a hundred questions till they 
halted before one of the gates in the flank of the 


palace that led to his mother’s wing. The woman 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 329 


of the desert rose from the ground beside it, and 
held out her arms. 

“T heard the message come,” she said to Kate, 
“and I knew what was required. Give me the 
child to carry in. Nay, my Prince, there is no 
cause for fear. I am of good blood.” 

“Women of good blood walk veiled, and do not 
speak in the streets,” said the child doubtfully. 

“One law for thee and thine, and another for 
me and mine,” the woman answered with a laugh. 
“We who earn our bread by toil cannot go veiled, 
but our fathers lived before us for many hundred 
years, even as did thine, Heaven-born. Come 
then, the white fairy cannot carry thee so tenderly 
as I can.” 

She put her arms about him, and held him to 
her breast as easily as though he had been a three- 
year-old child. He leaned back luxuriously, and 
waved a wasted hand; the grim gate grated on its 
hinges as it swung back, and they entered together 
—the woman, the child, and the gil. 

There was no lavish display of ornament in that 
part of the palace. The gaudy tile-work on the 
walls had flaked and crumbled away in many 
places, the shutters lacked paint and hung awry, 
and there was litter and refuse in the court-yard 
behind the gates. A queen who has lost the King’s 


favor loses much else as well in material comforts. 


330 THE NAULAHKA. 


A door opened and a voice called. The three 
plunged into half darkness, and traversed a long, 
upward-sloping passage, floored with shining white 
stucco as smooth as marble, which communicated 
with the Queen’s apartments. The Maharaj Kun- 
war’s mother lived by preference in one long, low 
room that faced to the northeast, that she might 
press her face against the marble tracery and dream 
of her home across the sands, eight hundred miles 
away, among the Kulu hills. The hum of the 
crowded palace could not be heard there, and the 
footsteps of her few waiting-women alone broke 
the silence. 

The woman of the desert, with the Prince hugged 
more closely to her breast, moved through the laby- 
rinth of empty rooms, narrow staircases, and roofed 
court-yards with the air of a caged panther. Kate 
and the Prince were familiar with the dark and 
the tortuousness, the silence and the sullen mys- 
tery. To the one it was part and parcel of the 
horrors amid which she had elected to move; to 
the other it was his daily life. 

At last the journey ended. Kate lifted a heavy 
curtain, as the Prince called for. his mother; and 
the Queen, rising from a pile of white cushions by 
the window, cried passionately — 

“Is it well with the child?” 


The Prince struggled to the floor from the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. ool 


woman's arms, and the Queen hung sobbing over 
him, calling him a thousand endearing names, and 
fondling him from head to foot. The child’s 
reserve melted—he had striven for a moment tc 
carry himself as a man of the Rajput race: that is 
to say, as one shocked beyond expression at any 
public display of emotion—and he laughed and 
wept in his mother’s arms. The woman of the 
desert drew her hand across her eyes, muttering to 
herself, and Kate turned to look out of the win- 
dow. } 

“ How shall I give you thanks?” said the Queen 
at last. “Oh, my son—my little son—child of 
my heart, the gods and she have made thee well 
again. - But who is that yonder?” 

Her eyes fell for the first time on the woman 
of the desert, where the latter stood by the door- 
way draped in dull-red. 


> said 


“She carried me here from the carriage,’ 
the Prince, “saying that she was a Rajput of good 
blood.” 

“T am of Chohan blood —a Rajput and a mother 
of Rajputs,” said the woman simply, still standing. | 
“The white fairy worked a miracle upon my man. 
He was sick in the head and did not know me. 
It is true that he died, but before the passing of 
the breath he knew me and called me by my 


name.” 


882 THE NAULAHKA. 


“And she carried thee!” said the Queen with a 
shiver, drawing the Prince closer to her, for, like 
all Indian women, she counted the touch and glance 
of a widow things of evil omen. ; 

The woman fell at the Queen’s feet. “ Forgive 
me, forgive me,” she cried. “I had borne three 
little ones, and the gods took them all and my 
man at the last. It was good—it was so good — 
to hold a child in my arms again. ‘Thou canst 
forgive,” she wailed, “thou art so rich in thy son, 
and I am only a widow.” 

“ And I a widow in life,” said the Queen under her 
breath. “Of a truth, I should forgive. Rise thou.” 

The woman lay still where she had fallen, clutch- 
ing at the Queen’s naked feet. 

“Rise, then, my sister,” the Queen whispered. 

“We of the fields,” murmured the woman of 
the desert, “we do not know how to speak to 
the great people. If my words are rough, does the 
Queen forgive me?” 

“Indeed I forgive. Thy speech is softer than 
that of the hill women of Kulu, but some of the 
words are new.” 

“T am of the desert —a herder of camels, a milker 
of goats. What should I know of the speech of 
courts? Let the white fairy speak for me.” 

Kate listened with an alien ear. Now that she 
had discharged her duty, her freed mind went back 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. aby 


to Tarvin’s danger and the shame and overthrow 
of an hour ago. She saw the women in her hos- 
pital slipping away one by one, her work unray- 
elled, and all hope of good brought to wreck; and 
she saw Tarvin dying atrocious deaths, and, as she 
felt, by her hand. 

“What is it?” she asked wearily, as the woman 
plucked at her skirt. Then to the Queen, “This 
is a@ woman who alone of all those whom I tried 
to benefit remained at my side to-day, Queen.” 

“There has been a talk in the palace,” said the 
Queen, her arm round the Prince’s neck, “a talk 
that trouble had come to your hospital, Sahiba.” 

“There is no hospital now,” Kate answered, 
erimly. 

“You promised to take me there, Kate, some 
day,” the Prince said in English. 

“'The women were fools,” said the woman of the 
desert quietly, from her place on the ground. “A 
mad priest told them a he—that there was a charm 
among the drugs —” 

“Deliver us from all evil spirits and exorcisms,” 
the Queen murmured. 

“A charm among her drugs that she handles 
with her own hands, and so forsooth, Sahiba, they 
must run out shrieking that their children will 
be misborn apes and their chicken-souls given to 
the devils. Aho! They will know in a week, 


334 7 THE NAULAHKA. 


not one or two, but many, whither their souls go: 
for they will die—the corn and the corn in the 
ear together.” 

Kate shivered. She knew too well that the 
woman spoke the truth. 

“But the drugs!” began the Queen. ‘“ Who 
knows what powers there may be in the drugs?” 
she laughed nervously, glancing at Kate. 

“ Dekho! Wook at her,” said the woman, with 
quiet scorn. “She is a girl and naught else. 
What could she do to the Gates of Life?” 

“She has made my son whole; therefore she is 


») 


my sister,” said the Queen. 

“She caused my man to speak to me before the 
death hour; therefore I am her servant as well as 
thine, Sahiba,’’ said the other. 

The Prince looked up in his mother’s face curi- 
ously. “She calls thee ‘thou,’” he said, as though 
the woman did not exist. “That is not seemly 
between a villager and a queen, thee and thou!” 

“We be both women, little son. Stay still in 
my arms. Oh, it is good to feel thee here again, 
worthless one.” 

“The Heaven-born looks as frail as dried maize,”’ 
said the woman quickly. 


b 


“A dried monkey, rather,’ returned the Queen, 
dropping her lips on the child’s head. Both 


mothers spoke aloud and with emphasis, that the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 335 


gods, jealous of human happiness, might hear and 
take for truth the disparagement that veils deepest 
love. , 

“Aho, my little monkey is dead,” said the Prince, 
moving restlessly. “I need another one. Let me 
go into the palace and find another monkey.” 

“He must not wander into the palace from this 
chamber,” said the Queen passionately, turning to 
Kate. “Thou art all too weak, beloved. Oh, Miss 
Sahib, he must not go.” She knew by experience 
that it was fruitless to cross her son’s will. 

“It is my order,” said the Prince, without turn- 
ing his head. “I will go.” 

“Stay with us, beloved,” said Kate. She was 
wondering whether the hospital could be dragged 
together again, after three months, and whether it 
was possible she might have overrated the danger 
to Nick. 


“T go,’ 


? 


said the Prince, breaking from his moth- 
er’s arms. “I am tired of this talk.” 

“Does the Queen give leave?” asked the woman 
of the desert under her breath. The Queen nodded, 
and the Prince found himself caught between two 
brown arms, against whose strength it was impos- 
sible to struggle. 

“Let me go, widow!” he shouted furiously. 
“It is not good for a Rajput to make light of 


> 


a mother of Rajputs, my king,” was the unmoved 


336 THE NAULAHKA. 


answer. “If the young steer does not obey the 
cow, he learns obedience from the yoke. ‘The 
Heaven-born is not strong. He will fall among 
those passages and stairs. He will stay here. 
When the rage has left his body. he will be weaker 


99 


than before. Even now’’——the large bright eyes 
bent themselves on the face of the child— “even 
now,’ the calm voice continued, “the rage is 
going. One moment more, Heaven-born, and thou 
wilt be a Prince no longer, but only a little, little 
child, such as I have borne. Adz, such as I shall 
never bear again.” 

With the last words the Prince’s head nodded 
forward on her shoulder. The gust of passion had 
spent itself, leaving him, as she had foreseen, weak 
to sleep. 

“Shame —oh, shame!” he muttered thickly. 
“Indeed I do not wish to go. Let me sleep.” 

“He is asleep,” she said at last. “What was 
the talk about his monkey, Miss Sahib?” 

“Tt died,” Kate said, and spurred herself to the 
he. “I think it had eaten bad fruit in the garden.” 

“In the garden?” said the Queen quickly. 

“Yes, in the garden.” 

The woman of the desert aig her eyes from 
one woman to the other. ‘These were matters too 
high for her, and she began timidly to rub the 
Queen’s feet. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. oot 


“Monkeys often die,” she observed. “I have 
seen as it were a pestilence among the monkey folk 
over there at Banswari.”’ 

“In what fashion did it die?” insisted the 
(Jueen. 

“T—TI do not know,” Kate stammered, and there 
was another long silence as the hot afternoon 
wore on. 

“Miss Kate, what do you think about my son?” 
whispered the Queen. “Is he well, or is he not 
well?” 

“He is not very well. In time he will grow 
stronger, but it would be better if he could go 
away for a while.” 

The Queen bowed her head quietly. “I have 
thought of that also many times sitting here alone; 
and it was the tearing out of my own heart from 
my breast. Yes, it would be well if he were to 
go away. But’—she stretched out her hands 
despairingly toward the sunshine—‘“what do I 
know of the world where he will go, and how can 
I be sure that he will be safe? Here —even here” 

She checked herself suddenly. “Since you 
have come, Miss Kate, my heart has known a little 
comfort, but I do not know when you will go 
away again.” 

“T cannot guard the child against every evil,” 


Kate replied, covering her face with her hands; 
Z 


338 THE NAULAHKA. 


“but send him away from this place as swiftly 
as may be. In God’s name let him go away.” 

“Such hai! Such hai! It is the truth, the 
truth!” The Queen turned from Kate to the 
woman at her feet. 

“Thou hast borne three?” she said. 

“Yea, three, and one other that never drew 
breath. They were all men-children,” said the 
woman of the desert. | 

“And the gods took them?” 

“Of smallpox one, and fever the two others.” 

“Art thou certain that it was the gods?” 

“IT was with them always till the end.” 

“Thy man, then, was all thine own?” 

“We were only two, he and I. Among our 
villages the men are poor, and one wife suffices.” 

“Arré! They are rich among the villages. 
Listen now. If a co-wife had sought the lives of 
those three of thine —” 

“T would have killed her. What else?” The 
woman’s nostrils dilated and her hand went swiftly 
to her bosom. | 

“And if in place of three there had been one 
only, the delight of thy eyes, and thou hadst 
known that thou shouldst never bear another, and 
the co-wife working in darkness had sought for 
that life? What then?” 

“IT would have slain her—but with no easy 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 339 


death. At her man’s side and in his arms I would 
have slain her. If she died before my vengeance 
arrived I would seek for her in hell.” - 

“Thou canst go out in the sunshine and walk 
in the streets and no man turns his head,” said 
the Queen bitterly. “Thy hands are free and thy 
face is uncovered. What if thou wert a slave 
among slaves, a stranger among stranger people, 
and’*—the voice dropped — “dispossessed of the 
favor of thy lord?” 

The woman, stooping, kissed the pale feet under 
her hands. 

“Then I would not wear myself with strife, but, 
remembering that a man-child may grow into a 
king, would send that child away beyond the power 
of the co-wife.” 

“Ts it so easy to cut away the hand?” said the 
Queen, sobbing. 

“ Better the hand than the heart, Sahiba. Who 
could guard such a child in this place?” 

The Queen pointed to Kate. “She came from 
far off, and she has once already brought him back 
from death.” 

“Her drugs are good and her skill is great, but 
—thou knowest she is but a maiden, who has 
known neither gain nor loss. It may be that I 
am luckless, and that my eyes are evil—thus did 
not my man say last autumn — but it may be. Yet 


340 THE NAULAHKA. 


I know the pain at the breast and the yearning over 
the child new-born —as thou hast known it.” 

“As I have known it.” 

“My house is empty and I am a widow and 
childless, and never again shall a man call me to 
wed.” 

“As I am —as I am.” 

“Nay, the little one is left, whatever else may 
go; and the little one must be well guarded. If 
there is any jealousy against the child it were not 
well to keep him in this hotbed. Let him go 
out.” 

“But whither? Miss Kate, dost thou know? 
The world is all dark to us who sit behind the 
curtain.” 

“T know that the child of his own motion desires 
to go to the princes’ school in Ajmir. He has told 
me that much,” said Kate, who had lost no word 
of the conversation from her place on the cushion, 
bowed forward with her chin supported in her 
hands. “It will be only for a year or two.” 

The Queen laughed a little through her tears. 
“Only a year or two, Miss Kate. Dost thou know 
how long is one night when he is not here?” 

“And he can return at call; but no cry will 
bring back mine own. Only a year or two. The 
world is dark also to those who do not sit behind 
the curtain, Sahiba. It is no fault of hers. How 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 341 


should she know?” said the woman of the desert 
under her breath to the Queen. 

Against her will, Kate began to feel annoyed at 
- this persistent exclusion of herself from the talk, 
and the assumption that she, with her own great 
trouble upon her, whose work was pre-eminently to 
deal with sorrow, must have no place in this double 
grief. 

“How should I not know?” said Kate impetu- 
ously. “Do I not know pain? Is it not my life?” 

“Not yet,” said the Queen quietly. ‘“ Neither 
pain nor joy. Miss Kate, thou art very wise, and 
I am only a woman who has never stirred beyond 
the palace walls. But I am wiser than thou, for 
I know that which thou dost not know, though thou 
hast given back my son to me, and to this woman 
her husband’s speech. How shall I repay thee 
all I owe?” 

“Let her hear truth,” said the woman under her 
breath. “We be all three women here, Sahiba — 
dead leaf, flowering tree, and the blossom un- 
opened.” 

The Queen caught Kate’s hands and gently 
pulled her forward till her head fell on the Queen’s 
knees. Wearied with the emotions of the morn- 
ing, unutterably tired in body and spirit, the girl 
had no desire to lift it. The small hands put her 
hair back from her forehead, and the full dark 


342 THE NAULAHKA. 


eyes, worn with much weeping, looked into her 
own. ‘The woman of the desert flung an arm 
round her waist. 

“Listen, my sister,” began the Queen, with an 
infinite tenderness. “There is a proverb among 
my own people, in the mountains of the north, 
that a rat found a piece of turmeric, and opened a 
druggist’s shop. Even so with the pain that thou 
dost know and heal, beloved. Thou art not angry? 
Nay, thou must not take offence. Forget that 
thou art white, and I black, and remember only 
that we three be sisters. Little sister, with us 
women ‘tis thus, and no other way. From all, 
except such as have borne a child, the world is 
hid. I make my prayers trembling to such and 
such a god, who thou sayest is black stone, and 
I tremble at the gusts of the night because I believe 
that the devils ride by my windows at such hours; 
and I sit here in the dark knitting wool and pre- 
paring sweetmeats that come back untasted from 
my lord’s table. And thou coming from ten thou- 
sand leagues away, very wise and fearing nothing, 
hast taught me, oh, ten thousand things. Yet 
thou art the child, and I am still the mother, and 
what I know thou canst not know, and the wells 
of my happiness thou canst not fathom, nor the 
bitter waters of my sorrow till thou hast tasted 
sorrow and grief alike. I have told thee of the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 343 


child —all and more than all thou sayest? Little 
sister, I have told thee less than the beginning 
of my love for him, because I knew that thou 
couldst not understand. I have told thee my sor- 
rows —all and more than all, thou sayest, when 
I laid my head against thy breast? How could I 
tell thee all? Thou art a maiden, and the heart 
in thy bosom, beneath my heart, betrayed in its 
very beat that it did not understand. Nay, that 
woman there, coming from without, knows more 
of me than thee? And they taught thee in a 
school, thou hast told me, all manner of healing, 
and there is no disease in life that thou dost not 
understand? Little sister, how couldst thou under- 
stand life that hast never given it? Hast thou 
ever felt the tug of the child at the breast? Nay, 
what need to blush? Hast thou? I know thou 
hast not. Though I heard thy speech for the first 
time, and looking from the window saw thee walk- 
ing, I should know. And the others —my sisters 
in the world—know also. But they do not all 
speak to thee as I do. When the life quickens 
under the breast, they, waking in the night, hear 
all the earth walking to that measure. Why 
should they tell thee? To-day the hospital has 
broken from under thee. Is it not so? And the 
women went out one by one? And what didst 
thou say to them?” 


344 THE NAULAHKA. 


The woman of the desert, answering for her, spoke. 
“She said, ‘Come back, and I will make ye well.’ ”’ 

“And by what oath did she affirm her words?” 

“'There was no oath,” said the woman of the 
desert; “she stood in the gate and called.” 

“And upon what should a maiden call to bring 
wavering women back again? ‘The toil that she 
has borne for their sake? They cannot see it. 
But of the pains that a woman has shared with 
them, a woman knows. There was no child in 
thy arms. The mother look was not in thy eyes. 
By what magic, then, wouldst thou speak to 
women? ‘There was a charm among the drugs, 
they said, and their children would be* misshapen. 
What didst thou know of the springs of hfe and 
death to teach them otherwise? It is written in 
the books of thy school, I know, that such things 
cannot be. But we women do not read books. It 
is not from them that we learn of hfe. How 
should such an one prevail, unless the gods help 
her—and the gods are very far away. ‘Thou hast 
given thy life to the helping of women. Little 
sister, when wilt thou also be a woman?” 

The voice ceased. Kate’s head was buried deep 
in the Queen’s lap. She let it lie there without 
stirring. 

“Ay!” said the woman of .the desert. “The 
mark of coverture has been taken from my head. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 345 


my glass bangles are broken on my arm, and I 
am unlucky to meet when a man sets forth on a 
journey. ‘Till I die I must be alone, earning my 
bread alone, and thinking of the dead. But though 
I knew that it was to come again, at the end of 
one year instead of ten, I would still thank the 
gods that have given me love and a child. Will 
the Miss Sahib take this in payment for all she 
did for my man? ‘A wandering priest, a childless 
woman, and a stone in the water are of one blood.’ 
So says the talk of our people. What will the 
Miss Sahib do now? The Queen has spoken the 
truth. The gods and thy own wisdom, which is 
past the wisdom of a maid, have helped thee so 
far, as I, who was with thee always, have seen. 
The gods have warned thee that their help is at 
anend. Whatremains? Is this work for such as 
thou? Is it not as the Queen says? She, sitting 
here alone, and seeing nothing, has seen that which 
I, moving with thee among the sick day by day, 
have seen and known. Little sister, is it not so?” 

Kate lifted her head slowly from the Queen’s 
knee, and rose. 

“Take the child, and let us go,” she said hoarsely. 

The merciful darkness of the room hid her face. 

“Nay,” said the Queen, “this woman shall take 
him. Go thou back alone.” 

Kate vanished. 


346 THE NAULAHKA. | 


CHAPTER XXI. 


The Law whereby my Lady moves 
Was never Law to me, 

But ’tis enough that she approves 
Whatever Law it be. 


For in that Law and by that Law 
My constant course I’ll steer ; 
Not that I heed or deem it dread, 

But that she holds it dear. 


Tho’ Asia sent for my content 
Her richest argosies, 

Those would I spurn and bid return 
If that should give her ease. 


With equal heart I’d watch depart 
Each spicéd sail from sight, 

Sans bitterness, desiring less 
Great gear than her delight. 


Yet such am IJ, yea such am I — 
Sore bond and freest free — 

The Law that sways my Lady’s ways 
Is mystery to me!* 


To sit still, and to keep sitting still, is the 
first lesson that the young jockey must learn. Tar- 
vin was learning it in bitterness of spirit. For the 
sake of his town, for the sake of his love, and, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 347 


above all, for the sake of his love’s life, he must 
go. The town was waiting, his horse was saddled 
at the door, but his love would not come. He 
must sit still. 

The burning desert wind blew through the open 
veranda as remorselessly as Sitabhai’s hate. Look- 
ing out, he saw nothing but the city asleep in the 
sunshine and the wheeling kites above it. Yet 
when evening fell, and a man might be able by 
bold riding to escape to the railway, certain shrouded 
figures would creep from the walls and take up 
their position within easy gunshot of the rest- 
house. One squatted at each point of the compass, 
and between them, all night long, came and went 
a man on horseback. ‘Tarvin could hear the steady 
beat of the hoofs as he went his rounds, and the 
sound did not give him fresh hope. But for Kate 
—but for Kate, he repeated to himself, he would 
have been long since beyond reach of horse or 
bullet. The hours were very slow, and as he sat 
and watched the shadows grow and shorten it 
seemed to him, as it had seemed so often before, 
that this and no other was the moment that Topaz 
would choose to throw her chances from her. 

He had lost already, he counted, eight-and-forty 
precious hours, and, so far as he could see, the 
remainder of the year might be spent in an equally 
unprofitable fashion. 


348 THE NAULAHKA. 


Meantime Kate lay exposed to every imaginable 
danger. Sitabhai was sure to assume that he had 
wrested the necklace from her for the sake of the 
“frail white girl”; she had said as much on the 
dam. It was for Kate’s sake, in a measure; but 
Tarvin reflected bitterly that an Oriental had no 
sense of proportion, and, like the snake, strikes first 
at that which is nearest. And Kate? How in the 
world was he to explain the case to her? He had 
told her of danger about her path as well as his 
own, and she had decided to face that danger. 
For her courage and devotion he loved her; but 
her obstinacy made him grit his teeth. There was 
but one grimly comical element in the terrible 
jumble. What would the King say to Sitabhai 
when he discovered that she had lost the Luck of 
the State? In what manner would she veil that 
loss; and, above all, into what sort of royal rage 
~ would she fall? Tarvin shook his head meditatively. 
“It’s quite bad enough for me,” he said, “ just 
about as bad as it can possibly be made; but I 
have a wandering suspicion that it may be un- 
wholesome for Juggut. Yes! I can spare time 
to be very sorry for Juggut. My fat friend, you 
should have held straight that first time, outside 
the city walls!” 

He rose and looked out into the sunlight, won- 
dering which of the scattered vagrants by the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 349 


roadside might be an emissary from the palace. <A 
man lay apparently asleep by the side of his camel 
near the road that ran to the city. Tarvin stepped 
out casually from the veranda, and saw, as soon 
as he was fairly in the open, that the sleeper rolled 
round to the other side of his beast. He strolled 
forward a few paces. The sunlight glinted above 
the back of the camel on something that shone like 
silver. Tarvin marched straight toward the glitter, 
his pistol in his hand. The man, when he came up 
to him, was buried in innocent slumber. Under 
the fold of his garment peered the muzzle of a 
new and very clean rifle. 

“Looks as if Sitabhai was calling out the militia, 
and supplying them with outfits from her private 


9 


armory. Juggut’s gun was new, too,” said Tarvin, 
standing over the sleeper. “But this man knows 
more about guns than Juggut. Hi!” He stooped 
down and stirred the man up with the muzzle of 
his revolver. “I’m afraid I must trouble you for 
that gun. And tell the lady to drop it, will you? 
It won’t pay.” 

The man understood the unspoken eloquence of 
the pistol, and nothing more. He gave up his 
gun sullenly enough, and moved away, lashing his 
camel spitefully. 

“Now, I wonder how many more of her army I 
shall have to disarm,” said Tarvin, retracing his 


350 THE NAULAHKA. 


steps, the captured gun over his shoulder. “1 
wonder — no, I won’t believe that she would dare to 
do anything to Kate! She knows enough of me to 
be sure that I’d blow her and her old palace into 
to-morrow. If she’s half the woman she pretends 
to be, she’]1 reckon with me before she goes much 
further.” 

In vain he attempted to force himself into this 
belief. Sitabhai had shown him what sort of thing 
her mercy might be, and Kate might have tasted 
it ere this. To go to her now—to be maimed or 
crippled at the least if he went to her now — was 
impossible. Yet, he decided that he would go. 
He returned hastily to Fibby, whom he had left 
not three minutes before flicking flies off in the 
sunshine at the back of the rest-house. But Fibby 
lay on his side groaning piteously, hamstrung and 
dying. 

Tarvin could hear his groom industriously polish- 
ing a bit round the corner, and when the man came 
up in response to his call he flung himself down 
by the side of the horse, howling with grief. 

“An enemy hath done this, an enemy hath done 
this!”’ he clamored. “My beautiful brown horse 
that never did harm except when he kicked through 
fulness of meat! Where shall I find a new ser- 
vice if I let my charge die thus?” 

“T wish I knew! I wish I knew!” said Tarvin, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 351 


puzzled, and almost despairing. “There’d be a 
bullet through one black head, if I were just a little 
surer. Get up, you! Fibby, old man, I forgive 
you all your sins. You were a good old boy, and 
—here’s luck.” 

The blue smoke enveloped Fibby’s head for an 
instant, the head fell ike a hammer, and the good 
horse was out of his pain. The groom, rising, 
rent the air with grief, till Tarvin kicked him out 
of the pickets and bade him begone. Then it 
was noticeable that his cries ceased suddenly, and, 
as he retreated into his mud-house to tie up his 
effects, he smiled and dug up some silver from a 
hole under his bedstead. 

Tarvin, dismounted, looked east, west, north, 
south for help, as Sitabhai had looked on the dam. 
A wandering gang of gypsies with their lean bul- 
locks and yelping dogs turned an angle of the city 
wall, and rested like a flock of unclean birds by 
the city gate. The sight in itself was not unusual, 
but city regulations forbade camping within a 
quarter of a mile of the walls. 

“Some of the lady’s poor relatives, I suppose. 
They have blocked the way through the gate pretty 
well. Now, if I were to make a bolt of it to the 
missionary’s they’d have me, wouldn’t they?” 
muttered Tarvin to himself. “On the whole, I’ve 
seen prettier professions than trading with Eastern 


352, THE NAULAHKA. 


queens. They don’t seem to understand the rules 
of the game.” 

At that moment a cloud of dust whirled through 
the gypsy camp, as the escort of the Maharaj Kun- 
war, clearing the way for the barouche, scattered 
the dark band to the left and right. ‘Tarvin won- 
dered what this might portend. The escort halted 
with the customary rattle of accoutrements at the 
rest-house door, the barouche behind them. A sin- 
gle trooper, two hundred yards or more in the rear, 
lifted his voice in a deferential shout as he pur- 
sued the carriage. He was answered by a chuckle 
from the escort, and two shrill screams of delight 
from the occupants of the barouche. 

A child whom Tarvin had never before seen 
stood upright in the back of the carriage, and 
hurled a torrent of abuse in the vernacular at the 
outpaced trooper. Again the escort laughed. 

“Tarvin Sahib! Tarvin Sahib!” piped the Maha- 
raj Kunwar. “Come and look at us.” 

For a moment Tarvin fancied this a fresh device 
of the enemy; but, reassured by the sight of his 
old and trusted ally, the Maharaj, he stepped for- 
ward. 

“Prince,” he said, as he took his hand, “you 
ought not to be out.” 

“Oh, it is all right,” said the young man hastily, 
though his little pale face belied it. “I gave the 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. B54 


order and we came. Miss Kate gives me orders; 
but she took me over to the palace, and there I 
give orders. This is Umr Singh—my brother, 
the little Prince; but J shall be King.” 

The second child raised his eyes slowly and looked 
full at Tarvin. The eyes and the low broad fore- 
head were those of Sitabhai, and the mouth closed 
firmly over the little pearl-like teeth, as his moth- 
er’s mouth had closed in the conflict on the Dungar 
Talao. 

“He is from the other side of the palace,” an- 
swered the Maharaj, still in English. “From the 
other side, where I must not go. But when I 
was in the palace I went to him— ha, ha, Tarvin 
Sahib—and he was killing a goat. Look! His 
hands are all red now.” 

Umr Singh opened a tiny palm at a word from 
the Maharaj in the vernacular, and flung it out- 
ward at Tarvin. It was dark with dried blood, and 
a bearded whisper ran among the escort. The 
commandant turned in his saddle, and, nodding at 
Tarvin, muttered, “ Sitabhai!” Tarvin caught the 
first word, and it was sufficient for him. Provi- 
dence had sent him help out of a clear sky. He 
framed a plan instantly. 

“But how did you come here, you young imps?” 
he demanded. 

“Oh, there are only women in the palace yonder, 

2A. 


354 THE NAULAHKA. 


and I am a Rajput and a man. He cannot speak 
any English at all,” he added, pointing to his 
companion; “but when we have played together I 
have told him about you, Tarvin Sahib, and about 
the day you picked me out of my saddle, and he 
wished to come too, to see all the things you 
show me, so I gave the order very quietly, and 
we came out of the little door together. And so 
we are here! Salaam baba,” he said patronizingly, 
to the child at his side, and the child, slowly and 
gravely, raised his hand to his forehead, still gazing 
with fixed, incurious eyes on the stranger. Then 
he whispered something that made the Maharaj 
Kunwar laugh. “He says,” said the Maharaj Kun- 
war, “that you are not so big as he thought. His 
mother told him that you were stronger than any 
man, but some of these troopers are bigger than 
you.” 

“Well, what do you want me to do?” asked 
Tarvin. 

“Show him your gun, and how you shoot rupees, 
and what you do that makes horses quiet when 
they kick, and all those things.” 

“All right,” said Tarvin. “But I can’t show 
them here. Come over to Mr. Estes with me.” 

“JT do not like to go there. My monkey is dead. 
And I do not think Kate would like to see us. 
She is always crying now. She took me up to 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. BOD 


the palace yesterday, and this morning I went to 
her again; but she would not see me.” 

Tarvin could have hugged the child for the 
blessed assurance that Kate at least still lived. 
“Tsn’t she at the hospital, then?” he asked thickly. 

“Oh, the hospital has all gone phut. There are 
no women now. ‘They all ran away.” 

“No!” cried Tarvin. “Say that again, little 
man. What for?” 

“Devils,” said the Maharaj Kunwar briefly. | 
“What do I know? It was some women’s talk. 
Show him how you ride, Tarvin Sahib.” 

Again Umr Singh whispered to his companion, 
and put one leg over the side of the barouche. 
“He says he will ride in front of you, as I told him 
I did,” interpreted the Prince. “Gurdit Singh, 
dismount!” 

A trooper flung himself out of the saddle on 
the word, and stood to attention at the horse’s head. 
Tarvin, smiling to himself at the perfection of his 
opportunity, said nothing, but leaped into the 
saddle, picked Umr Singh out of his barouche, and 
placed him carefully before him. 

“Sitabhai would be rather restless if she could 
see me,” he murmured to himself, as he tucked 
his arm round the lithe little figure. “I don’t 
think there will be any Juggutting while I carry 
this young man in front of me.” 


356 THE NAULAHKA. 


As the escort opened to allow Tarvin to take 
his place at their head, a wandering priest, who 
had been watching the episode from a little dis- 
tance, turned and shouted with all the strength of 
his lungs across the plain, in the direction of the 
city. The cry was taken up by unseen voices, 
passed on to the city walls, and died away on the 
sands beyond. 

Umr Singh smiled, as the horse began to trot, 
and urged Tarvin to go faster. This the Maharaj 
forbade. He wished to see the sight comfortably 
from his seat in the barouche. As he passed the 
gypsy camp, men and women threw themselves 
down on the sands, crying, “Jai! Jungle da Bad- 
shah jai!” and the faces of the troopers darkened. 


> 


“That means,” cried the Maharaj Kunwar, “ Vic- 
tory to the king of the desert. I have no money 
to give them. Have you, Tarvin Sahib?” 

In his joy at being now safely on his way to 
Kate, Tarvin could have flung everything he pos- 
sessed to the crowd—almost the Naulahka itself. 
He emptied a handful of copper and small silver 
among them, and the cry rose again, but bitter 
laughter was mingled with it, and the gypsy folk 
called to each other, mocking. The Maharaj Kun- 
war’s face turned scarlet. He leaned forward lis- 
tening for an instant, and then shouted, “By 
Indur, it is for Aim! Scatter their tents!” Ata 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. ODT 


wave of his hand the escort, wheeling, plunged 
through the camp in line, driving the light ash 
of the fires up in clouds, slashing the donkeys 
with the flat of their swords until they stampeded, 
and carrying away the frail brown tents on the 
butts of their reversed lances. 

Tarvin looked on contentedly at the dispersal 
of the group, which he knew would have stopped 
him if he had been alone. 

Umr Singh bit his lip. Then, turning to the 
Maharaj Kunwar, he smiled, and put forward from 
his belt the hilt of his sword in sign of fealty. 

“Tt is just, my brother,” he said in the vernac- 
ular. “But I” —here he raised his voice a little 
—“ would not drive the gypsy folk too far. They 
always return.” 

“Ay,” cried a voice from the huddled crowd, 
watching the wreck of the camp, significantly, 
“oypsies always return, my King.” 

“So does a dog,” said the Maharaj, between 
his teeth. “Both are kicked. Drive on.” 

And a pillar of dust came to. Estes’s house, Tar- 
vin riding in safety in the midst of it. 

Telling the boys to play until he came out, he 
swept into the house, taking the steps two at a 
time, and discovered Kate in a dark corner of the 
parlor with a bit of sewing in her hand. As she 
looked up he saw that she was crying. 


358 | THE NAULAHKA. 


“Nick!”? she exclaimed voicelessly. “ Wick!” 
He had stopped hesitating on the threshold; she 
dropped her work, and rose breathless. “ You have 
come back! It is you! You are alive!” 

Tarvin smiled, and held out his arms. “Come 
and see!” She took a step forward. 

“Oh, I was afraid—” 

“Come!” 

She went doubtfully toward him. He caught 
her fast, and held her in his arms. 

For a long minute she let her head lie on his 
breast. Then she looked up. “This isn’t what 
I meant,” she protested. 

“Oh, don’t try to improve on it!” Tarvin said 
hastily. 

“She tried to poison me. I was sure when I 
heard nothing that she must have killed you. I 
fancied horrible things.” 

“Poor child! And your hospital has gone wrong ! 
You have been having a hard time. But we will 
change all that. We must leave as soon as you 
can get ready. I’ve nipped her claws for a moment; 
I’m holding a hostage. But we can’t keep that 
up for ever. We must get away.” 

“We!” she repeated feebly. 

“Well, do you want to go alone?” 

She smiled as she released herself. “I want 


you to.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 359 


“And you?” 

“I’m not worth thinking of. I have failed. 
Everything I meant to do has fallen about me in 
a heap. I feel burnt out, Nick—burnt out!” 

“Allright! We’ll put in new works and launch 
you on a fresh system. That’s what I want. 
There shall be nothing to remind you that you ever 
saw Rhatore, dear.”’ 

“Tt was a mistake,” she said. 

“What?” 

“Everything. My coming. My thinking I 
could do it. It’s not a gitl’s work. It’s my work, 
perhaps; but it’s not for me. I have given it 
up, Nick. Take me home.” 

Tarvin gave an unbecoming shout of joy, and 
folded her in his arms again. He told her that 
they must be married at once, and start that night, 
if she could manage it; and Kate, dreading what 
might befall him, assented doubtfully. She spoke 
of preparations; but Tarvin said that they would 
prepare after they had done it. They could buy 


things at Bombay—stacks of things. He was 





sweeping her forward with the onrush of his ex- 
tempore plans, when she said suddenly, “ But what 
of the dam, Nick? You can’t leave that.” 
“Shucks!’’ exclaimed Tarvin heartily. “You 
don’t suppose there’s any gold in the old river, 


do you?” 


360 THE NAULAHKA. 


She recoiled quickly from his arms, staring at 
him in accusation and reproach. 

“Do you mean that you have always known that 
there was no gold there?” she asked. 

Tarvin pulled himself together quickly; but not 
so quickly that she did not catch the confession 
in his eye. 


“T-see you have,” 


she said coldly. 

Tarvin measured the crisis which had suddenly 
descended on him out of the clouds; he achieved 
an instantaneous change of front, and met her 
smiling. 

“Certainly,” he said; “I have been working it 
as a blind.” 

“A blind?” she repeated. “ To cover what?” 

GAY Os = 

“What do you mean?” she inquired, with a 
look in her eyes which made him uncomfortable. 

“The Indian Government allows no one_ to 
remain in the State without a definite purpose. I 
couldn’t tell Colonel Nolan that I had come court- 
ing you, could I?” 

“T don’t know. But you could have avoided 
taking the Maharajah’s money to carry out this — 
this plan. An. honest man would have avoided 
that.”’ 

“Oh, look here!” exclaimed Tarvin. 


“Tlow could you cheat the King into thinking 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 361 


that there was a reason for your work, how could 
you let him give you the labor of a thousand men, 
how could you take his money? Oh, Nick!” 

He gazed at her for a vacant and hopeless min- 
ute. “Why, Kate,’ he exclaimed, “do you know 
you are talking of the most stupendous joke the 
Indian empire has witnessed since the birth of 
time?” 

This was pretty good, but it was not good 
enough. He plunged for a stronger hold as she 
answered, with a perilous little note of breakdown 
in her voice, “ You make it worse.” 

“Well, your sense of humor never was your 
strongest point, you know, Kate.” He took the 
seat next her, leaned over and took her hand, as 
he went on. “ Doesn’t it strike you as rather amus- 
ing, though, after all, to rip up half a State to be 
near a very small little girl 





a very Sweet, very 
extra lovely little girl, but still a rather tiny little 
girl in proportion to the size of the Amet valley? 
Come — doesn’t it?” 

“Ts that all you have to say?” asked she. Tar- 
vin turned pale. He knew the tone of finality he 
heard in her voice; it went with a certain look of 
scorn when she spoke of any form of moral base- 
ness that moved her. He recognized his condem- 
nation in it and shuddered. In the moment that 


passed, while he still kept silence, he recognized 


362 THE NAULAHKA. 


this for the crisis of his life. Then he took strong 
hold of himself, and said quietly, easily, unscrupu- 
lously: 

“Why, you don’t suppose that I’m not going 
to ask the Maharajah for his bill, do you?” 

She gasped a little. Her acquaintance with Tar- 
vin did not help her to follow his dizzying changes 
of front. His bird’s skill to make his level flight, 
his reeling dips and circling returns upon himself, 
all seem part of a single impulse, must ever remain 
confusing to her. But she rightly believed in his 
central intention to do the square thing, if he 
could find out what it was; and her belief in his 
general strength helped her not to see at this 
moment that he was deriving his sense of the square 
thing from herself. She could not know, and 
probably could not have imagined, how little his 
own sense of the square thing had to do with any 
system of morality, and how entirely he must 
always define morality as what pleased Kate. 
Other women liked confections; she preferred mo- 
rality, and he meant she should have it, if he had 
to turn pirate to get it for her. 

“You didn’t think I wasn’t paying for the 
show?” he pursued bravely; but in his heart he 
was saying, “She loathes it. She hates it. Why 
didn’t I think; why didn’t I think?” He added 
aloud, “I had my fun, and now I’ve got you. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 363 


You’re both cheap at the price, and I’m going to 
step up and pay it lke a little man. You must 
know that.” 

His smile met no answering smile. He mopped 
his forehead and stared anxiously at her. All the 
easiness in the world couldn’t make him sure what 
she would say next. She said nothing, and he had 
to go on desperately, with a cold fear gathering 
about his heart. “ Why, it’s just like me, isn’t it, 
Kate, to work a scheme on the old Rajah? It’s 
like a man who owns a mine that’s turning out 
$2000 a month, to rig a game out in this desert 
country to do a confiding Indian prince out of a 
few thousand rupees?” He advanced this recently 
inspired conception of his conduct with an air of 
immemorial familiarity, born of desperation. 

“What mine?” she asked with dry lips. 

“The ‘Lingering Lode,’ of course. You’ve heard 
me speak of it?” 

“Yes, but I didn’t know —” 

“That it was doing that? Well, it is—right 
along. Want to see the assay?” 

“No,” she answered. “No. But that makes 
you— Why, but, Nick, that makes you—”’ 

“A rich man? Moderately, while the lead holds 
out. Too rich for petty larceny, I guess.” 

He was joking for his life. The heart-sickening 
seriousness of his unseriousness was making a hole 


364 THE NAULAHKA. 


in his head; the tension was too much for him. 
In the mad fear of that moment his perceptions 
doubled their fineness. Something went through 
him as he said “larceny.” Then his heart stopped. 
A sure, awful, luminous perception leaped upon 
him, and he knew himself for lost. 

If she hated this, what would she say to the 
other? Innocent, successful, triumphant, even gay 
it seemed to him; but what to her? He turned 
sick. 

Kate or the Naulahka. He must choose. The 
Naulahka or Kate? 

“Don’t make light of it,” she was saying. “You 
would be just as- honest if you couldn’t afford it, 
Nick. Ah,” she went on, laying her hand on his 
lightly, in mute petition for having even seemed to 
doubt him, “I know you, Nick! You like to make 
the better seem the worse reason; you like to pre- 
tend to be wicked. But who is so honest? Oh, 
Nick! I knew you had to be true. If you weren’t, 
everything else would be wrong.” 

He took her in his arms. ‘“ Would it, little 
girl?” he asked, looking down at her. “We must 
keep the other things right, then, at any expense.” 

He heaved a deep sigh as he stooped and kissed 
her. 

“Have you such a thing as a box?” he asked, 
after a long pause. 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 365 


“Any sort of box?” asked Kate, bewilderedly. 

“No—well, it ought to be the finest box in 
the world, but I suppose one of those big grape- 
boxes will do. It isn’t every day that one sends 
presents to a queen.” 

Kate handed him a large chip box in which long 
ereen grapes from Kabul had been packed.  Dis- 
colored cotton wool lay at the bottom. 

“That was sold at the door the other day,” she 
said. “Is it big enough?” 

Tarvin turned away without answering, emptied 
something that clicked like a shower of pebbles 
upon the wool, and sighed deeply. ‘Topaz was in 
that box. The voice of the Maharaj Kunwar lifted 
itself from the next room. 

“Tarvin Sahib— Kate, we have eaten all the 
fruit, and now we want to do something else.” 
said Tarvin. With 
his back still toward Kate, he drew his hand caress- 


“One moment, little man,”’ 


ingly, for the last time, over the blazing heap at 
the bottom of the box, fondling the stones one by 
one. The great green emerald pierced him, he 
thought, with a reproachful gaze. A mist crept 
into his eyes: the diamond was too bright. He 
shut the lid down upon the box hastily, and put 
it into Kate’s hands with a decisive gesture; he 
made her hold it while he tied it in silence. Then, 
in a voice not his, he asked her to take the box 


366 THE NAULAHKA. 


to Sitabhai with his compliments. “No,” he con- 
tinued, seeing the alarm in her eyes. “She won’t 
—she daren’t hurt you now. Her child’s coming 
along with us; and I’ll go with you, of course, as 
far as I can. Glory be, it’s the last journey that 
you’ll ever undertake in this infernal land. The 
last but one, that’s to say. We live at high press- 
ure in Rhatore—too high pressure for me. Be 
quick, if you love me.” 

Kate hastened to put on her helmet, while Tar- 
vin amused the two princes by allowing them to 
inspect his revolver, and promising at some more 
fitting season to shoot as many coins as they should 
demand. The lounging escort at the door was 
suddenly scattered by a trooper from without, who 
flung his horse desperately through their ranks, 
shouting, “A letter for Tarvin Sahib!” 

Tarvin stepped into the veranda, took a crumpled 
half-sheet of paper from the outstretched hand, and 
read these words, traced painfully and laboriously 
in an unformed round hand: 


Dear Mr. Tarvin: Give me the boy and keep the 
other thing. Your affectionate 
FRIEND. 


Tarvin chuckled and thrust the note into his 
waistcoat pocket. ‘There is no answer,” he said 
—and to himself: “You’re a thoughtful girl, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 367 


Sitabhai, but I’m afraid you’re just a little too 
thoughtful. That boy’s wanted for the next half- 
hour. Are you ready, Kate?” 

The princes lamented loudly when they were 
told that Tarvin was riding over to the palace at 
once, and that, if they hoped for further entertain- 
ment, they must both go with him. “We will go 
into the great Durbar Hall,” said the Maharaj 
Kunwar consolingly to his companion at last, 
“and make all the music-boxes play together.” 

“T want to see that man shoot,” said Umr Singh. 
“IT want to see him shoot something dead. I do 
not wish to go to the palace.” 

“You'll ride on my horse,” said Tarvin, when 
the answer had been interpreted, “and Ill make 
him gallop all the way. Say, Prince, how fast 
do you think your carriage can go?” 

“As fast as Miss Kate dares.” 

Kate stepped in, and the cavalcade galloped to 
the palace, Tarvin riding always a little in front 
with Umr Singh clapping his hands on the saddle- 
bow. 

“We must pull up at Sitabhai’s wing, dear,” 
Tarvin cried. “You won’t be afraid to walk in 
under the arch with me?” 

“T trust you, Nick,” she answered simply, get- 
ting out of the carriage. 

“Then go into the woman’s wing. Give the 


368 THE NAULAHKA. 


box into Sitabhai’s hands, and tell her that I 
sent it back. You’ll find she knows my name.” 

The horse trampled under the archway, Kate at 
its side, and Tarvin holding Umr Singh very much 
in evidence. The court-yard was empty, but as 
they came out into the sunshine by the central 
fountain the rustle and whisper behind the shutters 
rose, as the tiger-grass rustles when the wind 
blows through it. 

“One minute, dear,” said Tarvin, halting, “if 
you can bear this sun on your head.” 

A door opened and a eunuch came out, beckon- 
ing silently to Kate. She followed him and dis- 
appeared, the door closing behind her. ‘Tarvin’s 
heart rose into his mouth, and unconsciously he 
clasped Umr Singh so closely to his breast that 
the child cried out. 

The whisper rose, and it seemed to Tarvin as 
if some one were sobbing behind the shutters. 
Then followed a peal of low, soft laughter, and 
the muscles at the corner of Tarvin’s mouth re- 
laxed. Umr Singh began to struggle in his arms. 

“Not yet, young man. You must wait until — 
ah! thank God.” 

Kate reappeared, her little figure framed against 
the darkness of the doorway. Behind her came 
the eunuch, crawling fearfully to Tarvin’s side. 
Tarvin smiled affably, and dropped the amazed 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 369 


young Prince into his arms. Umr Singh was borne 
away kicking, and ere they left the court-yard 
Tarvin heard the dry roar of an angry child, fol- 
lowed ‘by an unmistakable yelp of pain. Tarvin 
smiled. 

“They spank young princes in Rajputana. That’s 
one step on the path to progress. What did she 
say, Kate?” 

“She said I was to be sure and tell you that 
she knew you were not afraid. ‘Tell Tarvin Sahib 
that I knew he was not afraid.’ ”’ 

“Where’s Umr Singh?” asked the Maharaj 
Kunwar from the barouche. , 

“He’s gone to his mother. I’m afraid I can’t 
amuse you just now, little man. I’ve forty thou- 
sand things to do, and no time to do them in. 
Tell me where your father is.” 

“I do not know. There has been trouble and 
crying in the palace. The women are always 
crying, and that makes my father angry. I shall 
stay at Mr. Estes’s, and play with Kate.” 

“Yes. Let him stay,” said Kate, quickly. 
“Nick, do you think I ought to leave him?” 

“That’s another of the things I must fix,” said 
Tarvin. “But first I must find the Maharajah, 
if I have to dig up Rhatore for him. What’s that, 
little one?” 

A trooper whispered to the young Prince. 

2B 


370 THE NAULAHKA. 


“This man says that he is there,” said the 
Maharaj Kunwar. “He has been there since two 
days. I also have wished to see him.” 

“Very good. Drive home, Kate. [ll wait 
here.”’ 

He re-entered the archway, and reined up. 
Again the whisper behind the shutter rose, and a 
man from a doorway demanded his business. 

“T must see the Maharajah,” said Tarvin. 

“Wait,” said the man. And Tarvin waited for 
a full five minutes, using his time for concentrated 
thought. | 

Then the Maharajah emerged, and amiability sat 
on every hair of his newly oiled moustache. 

For some mysterious reason Sitabhai had with- 
drawn the light of her countenance from him 
for two days, and had sat raging in her own apart- 
ments. Now the mood had passed, and the gypsy 
would see him again. Therefore the Maharajah’s 
heart was glad within him; and wisely, as befitted 
the husband of many wives, he did not inquire too 
closely into the reasons that had led to the change. 

“Ah, Tarvin Sahib,” said he, “I have not seen 
you for long. What is the news from the dam? 
Is there anything to see?” 

“Maharajah Sahib, that’s what I’ve come to talk 
about. There is nothing to see, and I think that 
there is no gold to be got at.” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. aia! 


“That is bad,” said the King, lightly. 

“But there is a good deal to be seen, if you 
care to come along. I don’t want to waste your 
money any more, now I’m sure of the fact; but I 
don’t see the use of saving all the powder on the 
dam. There must be five hundred pounds of it.” 

“T do not understand,” said the Maharajah, 
whose mind was occupied with other things. 

“Do you want to see the biggest explosion that 
you’ve ever seen in your life? Do you want to 
hear the earth shake, and see the rocks fly?” 

The Maharajah’s face brightened. 

“Will it be seen from the palace?” he said; 
“from the top of the palace?” 

“Oh, yes. But the best place to watch it will 
be from the side of the river. I shall put the 
river back at five o’clock. It’s three o’clock now. 
Will you be there, Maharajah Sahib?” 

“IT will be there. It will be a big tamasha. 
Five hundred pounds of powder! The earth will 
be rent in two.” 

“TI should remark. And after that, Maharajah 
Sahib, I am going to be married; and then I am 
going away. Will you come to the wedding?” 

The Maharajah shaded his eyes from the sun- 
glare, and peered up at Tarvin under his turban. 

“By God, Tarvin Sahib,” said he, “you are a 
quick man. So you will marry the doctor-lady, 


372 THE NAULAHKA. 


and then you will go away? I will come to the 
wedding. I and Pertab Singh.” 


THE next two hours in the life of Nicholas 
Tarvin will never be adequately chronicled. There 
was a fierce need upon him to move mountains 
and shift the poles of the earth; there was a 
strong horse beneath him, and in his heart the 
knowledge that he had lost the Naulahka and 
gained Kate. When he appeared, a meteor amid 
the coolies on the dam, they understood, and a 
word was spoken that great things were toward. 
The gang foreman turned to his shouts, and learned 
that the order of the day was destruction — the 
one thing that the Oriental fully comprehends. 

They dismantled the powder-shed with outcries 
and fierce yells, hauled the bullock-carts from the 
crown of the dam, and dropped the derrick after 
them, and tore down the mat and grass coolie- 
lines. Then, Tarvin urging them always, they 
buried the powder-casks in the crown of the half- 
built dam, piled the wrapped charges upon them, 
and shovelled fresh sand atop of all. 

It was a hasty onslaught, but the powder was 
at least all in one place; and it should be none 
of Tarvin’s fault if the noise and smoke at least 
did not delight the Maharajah. 

A little before five he came with his escort, and 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 373 


Tarvin, touching fire to a many times lengthened 
fuse, bade all men run back. ‘The fire ate slowly 
the crown of the dam. Then with a dull roar 
the dam opened out its heart in a sheet of white 
flame, and the masses of flying earth darkened the 
smoke above. 

The ruin closed on itself for an instant ere the 
waters of the Amet plunged forward into the gap, 
made a boiling rapid, and then spread themselves 
lazily along their accustomed levels. 

The rain of things descending pitted the earth 
of the banks and threw the water in sheets and 
spurts. Then only the smoke and the blackened 
flanks of the dam, crumbling each minute as the 
river sucked them down, remained to tell of the 
work that had been. 

“And now, Maharajah Sahib, what do I owe 
you?” said Tarvin, after he had satisfied himself 
that none of the more reckless coolies had been 
killed. | 

-“That was very fine,’ said the Maharajah. “I 
never saw that before. It is a pity that it cannot 
come again.” ) 

“What do I owe you?” repeated Tarvin. 

“For that? Oh, they were my people. They 
ate a little grain, and many were from my jails. 
The powder was from the arsenal. What is the 
use to talk of paying? Am I a bunnia that I 


374 THE NAULAHKA. 


can tell what there is to pay? It was a fine 
tamasha. By God, there is no dam left at all.” 

“You might let me put it right.” 

“Tarvin Sahib, if you waited one year, or per- 
haps two years, you would get a bill; and besides, 
if anything was paid, the men who pay the con. 
victs would take it all, and I should not be richer. 
They were my people, and the grain was cheap, 
and they have seen the tamasha. Enough. It is 
not good to talk of payment. Let us return to 
the city. By God, Tarvin Sahib, you are a quick 
man. Now there will be no one to play pachisi 
with me or to make me laugh. And the Maharaj 
Kunwar will be sorry also. But it is good that 
a man should marry. Yes, it is good. Why do 
you go, Tarvin Sahib? Is it an order of the 
Government?” 

“Yes —the American government. I am wanted 
there to help govern my State.” 

“No telegram has come for you,” said the King, 
simply. “But you are so quick.” 7 

Tarvin laughed lightly, wheeled his horse and 
was gone, leaving the King interested but unmoved. 
He had finally learned to accept Tarvin and his 
ways as a natural phenomenon beyond control. As 
he drew rein instinctively opposite the missionary’s 
door and looked for a instant at the city, the sense 
of the otherness of daily-seen things that heralds 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 375 


swift-coming change smote the mind of the Ameri- 
can, and he shivered. “It was a bad dream—a 
very bad dream,” he muttered, “and the worst of 
it is not one of the boys in Topaz would ever 
believe half of it.” Then the eyes that swept the 
arid landscape twinkled with many reminiscences. 
“Tarvin, my boy, you’ve played with a kingdom, 
and for .results it lays over monkeying with the 
buzz-saw. You were left when you sized this state 
up for a played-out hole in the ground. Badly 
left. If you have been romping around six months 
after something you hadn’t the sabe to hold when 
you’d got, you’ve learned that much. Topaz! 
Poor old Topaz!” 

- Again his eyes ran round the tawny horizon, 
and he laughed aloud. ‘The little town under the 
shadow of Big Chief, ten thousand miles away and 
all ignorant of the mighty machinery that had 
moved on its behalf, would have resented that 
laugh; for Tarvin, fresh from events that had 
shaken Rhatore to its heart, was almost patroniz- 
ing the child of his ambition. 

He brought his hand down on his thigh with a 
smack, and turned his horse towards the telegraph 
office. ‘How in the name of all that’s good and 
holy,” said he, “am I to clear up this business 
with the Mutrie? Even a copy of the Naulahka 
in glass would make her mouth water.” The horse 


376 THE NAULAHKA. 


cantered on steadily and Tarvin dismissed the 
matter with a generous sweep of his free hand. 
“Tf I can stand it, she can. But I'll prepare her 
by electricity.” 

The dove-colored telegraph-operator and Post- 
master-general of the State remembers even to-day 
how the Englishman, who was not an Englishman 
and therefore doubly incomprehensible, climbed for 
the last time up the narrow stairs, sat down in 
the broken chair, and demanded absolute silence. 
How, at the end of fifteen minutes’ portentous 
meditation and fingering of a thin moustache, he 
sighed heavily as is the custom of Englishmen 
when they have eaten that which disagrees with 
them, waved the operator aside, called up the next 
office, and clicked off a message with a haughty 
and high-stepping action of the hands. How he 
lingered long and lovingly over the last click, 
apphed his ear to the instrument as though it 
could answer, and turning with a large, sweet 
smile, said: —‘“ Finis Babu; make a note of that,” 


and swept forth, chanting the war-cry of his State: 


“Tt is not wealth, nor rank, nor state, 


But get-up-and-get that makes men great.” 


* * * * * * 


The bullock-cart creaked down the road to Rawut 
Junction in the first flush of a purple evening, 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. Oia 


and the low ranges of the Aravullis showed as 
many-colored cloud-banks against the turquoise 
sky-line. Behind it the red rock of Rhatore burned 
angrily on the yellow floors of the desert, speckled 
with the shadows of browsing camels. Overhead 
the Crane and the wild duck were flocking back 
to their beds in the reed, and gray monkeys, family 
by family, sat on the roadside, their arms round 
each other’s necks. The- Evening Star came up 
from behind a jagged peak of rock and brushwood, 
that its reflection might swim undisturbed at the 
bottom of an almost dried reservoir, buttressed with 
time-yellowed marble and flanked with silver plume- 
grass. Between the star and the earth wheeled 
huge fox-headed bats, and night-jars hawking for 
the feather-winged moths. The buffaloes had left 
their water-holes, and the cattle were lying down 
for the night. Then villagers in far-away huts 
began to sing, and the hillsides were studded with 
home-lights. “The bullocks grunted as the driver 
twisted their tails, and the high grass by the road- 
side brushed with the wash of a wave of the open 
beach against the slow-turning tires. 

The first breath of a cold-weather night made 
Kate wrap her rugs about her more closely. Tar- 
vin was sitting at the back of the cart, swinging 
his legs and staring at Rhatore before the bends 
of the road should hide it. The realization of 


378 THE NAULAHKA. 


defeat, remorse, and the torture of an over well- 
trained conscience were yet to come to Kate. In 
that hour, luxuriously disposed upon many cush- 
ions, she realized nothing more than a woman’s 
complete contentment with the fact that there was 
a man in the world to do things for her, though 
she had not yet learned to lose her interest in how 
they were done. The reiterated and passionate 
farewells of the women in the palace, and the 
cyclonic sweep of a wedding at which Nick had 
altogether refused to efface himself as a bridegroom 
should, but had flung all their world forward on 
the torrent of his own vitality, had worn her out; 
the yearning of homesickness —she had seen it in 
Mrs. Estes’s wet eyes at the missionary’s house 
an hour before—lay strong upon her, and she 
would fain have remembered her plunge into the 
world’s evil as a dream of the night, but— 

“Nick,” she said softly. 

“What is it, little woman?” 

“Oh, nothing; I was thinking. Nick, what did 
you do about the Maharaj Kunwar?” 

“ He’s fixed, or I’m mistaken. Don’t worry your 
head about that. After I’d explained a thing or 
two to old man Nolan, he seemed to think. well 
of inviting that young man to board with him 
until he starts for the Mayo College. Tumble?” 

“His poor mother! If only I could have —” 


A STORY OF WEST AND EAST. 379 


“But you couldn’t, little woman. Hi! Look 
quick, Kate! ‘There she goes! The last of Rha- 
tore.” 

A string of colored lights, high up on the 
hanging-gardens of the palace, was disappearing 
behind the velvet blackness of a hill shoulder. 
Tarvin leaped to his feet, caught the side of the 
cart, and bowed profoundly after the Oriental 
manner. 

The lights disappeared one by one, even as the 
glories of a necklace had slidden into a cabuli 
grape-box, till there remained only the flare from 





a window on a topmost bastion—a point of light 
as red and as remote as the blaze of the Black 
Diamond. That passed too, and the soft darkness 
rose out of the earth fold upon fold, wrapping the 
man and the woman. 

“After all,” said Tarvin, addressing the new- 
lighted firmament, “that was distinctly a side- 


issue.” 


THE END. 





THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 


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